
Class JiS \X 



Book .^4.12^ 
CopightN" 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr 




THE TRUE BASIS 



ECONOMICS 



THE LAW OF INDEPENDENT AND 
COLLECTIVE HUMAN LIFE 



BEING A CORRESPONDENCE 



DAVID STARR JORDAN 

President of the Leland Stanford Jr. University 

, r AND 

DR. J. H. STALLARD 

Of Menio Park, California 
ON THE MERITS OF 

THE DOCTRINE OF HENRY GEORGE 



NEW YORK 
DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. 



^-2.7 



;'2G1889 



-"■^rv oi 







42208 



Copyright, 1899 

BY 

J. H. STAL.L.ARD 
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 

Copyright, 1899 

BY 

J. H. STALLARD 
jPTo COjgJ^S'BSQElVED. 



\ ZZt A'lu iQ^O 







PREFACE. 

This correspondence ensued on my request to 
Dr. David Starr Jordan, the President of Stanford 
University, that he would give me his opinion and 
comments on Henry George's letter to the Pope on 
the condition of labor. 

It may be remembered that when the Rev. Dr. 
McOlynn, of New York, became a convert to the 
Single Tax, he was silenced by order of the Pope, 
and eventually excommunicated for contempt of 
his authority. The Pope then addressed an en- 
cyclical letter to his clergy, setting forth the 
principles involved in the labor problem as he saw 
them. To this Henry George replied in an open 
letter which was placed in the hands of the Pope 
himself. His Holiness apparently perceived that 
injustice had been done, and he ordered the re- 
opening of Dr. McGlynn's case, with the result 
that he was restored to his duties in New York, 
the order of silence was withdrawn, and he was 
fully restored to the bosom of the Church. 

Dr. Jordan promptly complied with my request, 
and in sending him my arguments in opposition to 
his views, I requested his permission to publish 



the correspondence, with such further comments 
as he might choose to make. 

Dr. Jordan's answer is characteristic of the wise 
and open-minded man he is: "I have made many 
notes. Publish what seems to you not trifling or 
irrelevant and sign them (J), and add as many 
more as you please and sign them (S). The whole 
will be instructive and set folks thinking. That 
is all we college men are for." 

That, too, is all that Single Taxers are for, and 
it is for the public to determine what is right. 

For convenience the notes have been put in an 

appendix. 

J. H. STALLAKD, M. B., 

London, Etc., Etc. 
The Bungalow, Menlo Park, 

San Mateo Co., Cal., May, 1899. 



LETTER FROM 

Dr. DAVID STARR JORDAN, 

President Leland Stanford, Jr., University. 

Dpw. J. H. Stallard: — 

There are many brilliant and many true things 
in Mr. George's book, and on the basis of His 
Holiness' assumption Mr. George gives him a very 
complete as well as a very courteous answer. 

But as a whole, neither this nor any other of 
George's writings appeals to me. His whole basis 
seems faulty. He assumes that certain forms of 
property relation have a divine or sacred right. 
This assumption entering into his premises, re- 
appears in his conclusions, which are thus re- 
garded as proved, according to his logic. I deny 
every word of such premises, because I regard 
them as based on mere figures of speech. There is 
no such thing as a "right," except as we find ex- 
perimentally that a certain line of action makes 
for more and better life among men. As regards 
the "law of equal access to land" among men, such 
a law is a mere figment, a mere metaphor. The 
trees have not equal access. While the present 
way of paying running expenses of government is 
very crude and faulty, and while a single tax 



would have several advantages, it has also its 
drawbacks, and a land tax is no more God-given 
than a beer tax. 

Mr. George was a devoted man, had full faith in 
the saeredness of his mission, and he uses divine 
metaphors just as preachers do. The methods of 
science seem wholly unknown to him, and he falls 
back on his imaginary ethics whenever any one 
asks him how he would go to work to make land 
public property — whether, for example, by buying 
it or by seizing it, or by alone taxing ownership 
out of existence, and as to how any of these 
methods could be made to work. Property is not 
a divine right. It is a creation of social agree- 
ment, and the relation best for society is '^righf' 
if we can find it out. 

If, as Dr. Warner says, "putting air in private 
hands would yield a better supply on juster terms, 
there is no divine reason why we should not turn 
the atmosphere over to an air company." 

Take George^s work, squeeze out every meta- 
phor, cut out all this stuff from the French dream- 
ers of the last century about the rights of man to 
one thing or another, and put it all into straight 
English. You would have considerable practical 
sense about various men and things drawn from 
his own extensive observations; but the argument 
from divine right and the purposes of nature has 



not a straw's weight, namely: that men have a 
natural right to access to land; therefore, all taxes 
must by divine authority be laid on land rentals. 
I am not objecting to the idea of the public use 
of land rentals, but to the divine or metaphysical 
argument in its favor. The only true argument 
must be this: It has been tried, it works, and its 
results on individual and social development are 
better than those obtained through other forms of 
land tenure and of taxation. I do not believe this, 
either, but I am reasonably open to conviction. 
Argument from purpose, intention or divine fit- 
ness is a mere quibble of words. 

DAVID STARR JORDAN. 



ANSWER OF 

Dr. J. H. STALLARD, 

The Bungalow, Menlo Park, Cal. 

Dear Dr. Jordan: — 

I have to thank you for your prompt reply to my 
request for your opinion of Henry George's ad- 
dress to the Pope on the condition of labor. 

You are a prince among educators, the head of 
the most liberal university in the world — an insti- 
tution which I trust under your leadership shall 
become the home of all freedom, and w^hose pro- 
fessors and students shall determine the lines of 
action which shall hereafter make for more and 
better life among men, for which there is more 
than ample room. I therefore regard the expres- 
sion of your views on this, as on all intellectual, 
social, and political questions on which you choose 
to speak, as the truest representation of modern 
thought of the highest type, and I shall endeavor 
to discuss the subject in hand in all seriousness 
and with due respect. 

You say, "That the whole basis of Mr. George's 
argument is faulty; that he assumes that certain 
forms of property relation have a divine or sacred 



right, and that his premises are based upon mere 
figures of speech. Take George's work, squeeze 
out every metaphor, cut out all the 'stuff' of the 
French dreamers of the last century about the 
rights of man to one thing or another, and put it 
all into straight English, the argument would not 
have a straw's weight. In his logic he takes out 
nothing at the end not assumed at the beginning." 
In the following observations I propose to 
squeeze out every metaphor, every suggestion of 
divine authority and the purposes of nature, all 
the "stuff" of the French dreamers of the last cen- 
tury, to confine myself to the most strictly scien- 
tific methods, and, in straight English, to base my 
argument on facts established by human observa- 
tion and experience about which there is abso- 
lutely no room for doubt. 

Before doing so I desire to thank you for your 
good and terse definition of what is "right," and 
I agree "that there is no such thing as 'right' ex- 
cept as we find experimentally that a certain 
line of action makes for more and better life 
among men." I promise faithfully to apply this 
definition to every conclusion I may draw. 

THE LAW OF INDEPENDENT HUMAN LIFE. 

In the first place, man is an animal endowed 
with "intelligence" and "strength,"^ which, in 



active combination is technically called '4abor.'^ 
Labor exerted upon earth, air, water and sunshine, 
technically called ^^land," yields the product 
"food," on which "all men" live. The application 
of labor to land is technically called "industry"^ 
in the following argument. 

These simple indisputable facts form the whole 
foundation of Mr. George's argument. There is in 
these premises no metaphor, no mere figures of 
speech, no "if," no assumption of divine right or 
purposes of nature, but a simple, truthful and un- 
answerable statement of man's dependence on the 
voluntary exercise of his own powers upon "land," 
on the result of which he lives and maintains 
existence. Here then we have a statement of bare, 
undoubted facts, involving a simple line of action, 
which not only makes for more and better life 
among men but is the only possible foundation for 
the continuance of human life. 

In the next place, that which is true of the 
whole is true of the several parts upon which this 
line of action operates. Man finds experimentally 
that he must have under his own individual con- 
trol intelligence, strength and land, none of which 
can be taken from him without the destruction of 
his life. There is no experimental evidence that 
human life can be continuously maintained in any 



10 



other way.^ Man cannot live on intelligence, nor 
on strength, and ^'food'' will not drop into his open 
mouth.^ This line of action being open, man^s in- 
dependent life depends solely on his own volun- 
tary exertion. If a man will not work, neither 
shall he eat, and the penalty of idleness is death. 
Happily ''industry" is as natural as "sleep" to 
healthy, well-fed men, and the gate of inde- 
pendence is thus made open. 

You have lately taught us wisely that the main- 
tenance and development of manhood is the most 
important matter which any nation in the world 
has now on hand, and that each man must help to 
solve his own problems. The independent main- 
tenance of his own life is for each man the first 
and most important problem. The manhood of a 
nation depends on the manhood of its units. The 
conditions of the problem are embodied in the line 
of action evolved from the facts detailed. A man 
has only to be free to think, free to act, and free to 
take maintenance by his own labor from the land, 
and the problem for the individual is solved. His 
life, therefore, depends on the active combination 
of intellectual, personal, and industrial freedom. 
There is no other way. No man is free who under 
any condition whatever is compelled to beg of an* 
other either food or work.^ Absolute individual 
freedom depends on "self employment," only made 

u 



possible by "access to land/^ which is, therefore, 
no ''7n€r€ figment/^ but an essential condition in the 
maintenance of independent human life.^ Lastly, 
justice between man and man declares the equal 
right of every man to the products of his own 
labor. It constitutes his wealth and is the founda- 
tion upon which his freedom rests. It is his to 
consume, to hoard or dispose of at his will, and no 
one has either legal or moral right to take it from 
him without his consent and adequate compensa- 
tion. 

Your argument that the trees have not "equal 
access'' to land seems to me without force.^ The 
life of trees is not dependent on the same condi- 
tions as the life of man. Trees are not endowed 
either with intellect or active strength.^ They 
have no power of choice or locomotion, both of 
which are absolute conditions of individual human 
life. Besides "equaV^ access is neither possible nor 
necessary either to trees or man. Equal oppor- 
tunity is all that is required. Once armed with 
the independent opportunity of maintaining life 
by the employment of his own "labor" upon "land'^ 
a man however destitute is really "free."^ He is 
no longer at the mercy of employers.^^ He is no 
longer subject to the law of Lasalle. Henceforth 
he is provided with an alternative which enables 
him to refuse "Mre subsistence icageSy^ and he pos- 

12 



sesses an independent remedy against starvation, 
misery and death. He is provided with a line of 
action which experimentally makes for more and 
better life among men.^^ 

In the next place, this ^aine of action" is in- 
exorable, unalterable, and universal in its applica- 
tion. There is no other "line of action" which se- 
cures the independent existence of human beings. 
It rises, therefore, to the conditions of "a general 
law.-' This law of independent life controls the 
maintenance of human life and movements just as 
the law of gravitation controls the life and move- 
ments of the planetary bodies. Starvation, 
misery and death result from the violation of the 
one, as surely as planetary destruction would from 
the violation of the other.^^ 

Now, general laws are laws of necessity, moral- 
ity and justice. In action they are just, equal, un- 
changeable and permanent. There is, therefore, 
no room for that fickle, unstable, undefined and 
mythical force called "Social Agreement," which 
is wholly unable to determine what is "right," and 
it is no wonder that "rights" so artificially created 
are diflScult, nay, impossible, to find out. Social 
agreement cannot be a substitute for a general 
law, for no statesman is wise enought, no govern- 
ment strong enough, to improve on such a law. 
Social agreement can only meddle with intel- 



13 



lectual, personal and industrial freedom, to spoil 
their just and equal action. Social agreement is 
impotent to provide either food or employment for 
all mankind.^^ History provides us with many ex- 
amples of its baneful interference. In the reign of 
Henry VII, when in England ''every rood main- 
tained its man/' the English yeoman occupied his 
rood in comfort and happiness on definite and 
easy terms." But when Henry VIII made land a 
commodity to be bought, sold, and controlled by 
individuals (called Steplords by Latimer), the 
masses of the people were evicted from their 
homesteads by the exaction of rent they could not 
pay. In a few years the whole island swarmed 
with the destitute, who became vagabonds and 
thieves in order to sustain existence. The nation 
was threatened with anarchy, and in the reign of 
Elizabeth social agreement, as represented by the 
English Poor Law, endeavored to remedy the evil, 
by giving to the destitute a legal right to food, 
clothing and shelter, making this a first charge 
upon the land. The result was pauperism; the 
greatest curse ever inflicted upon a thrifty and in- 
dustrious people.^^ 

After 300 years the sermons of Latimer are re- 
echoed by Mr. Henry George, and happily their 
doctrines will never again be stifled at the stake. 

In Spain, social agreement attempted to control 

14 



the intellects of men, and the result was the 
miseries, tortures and murders of the Inquisition. 

In America and elsewhere social agreement 
sought to control personal freedom, and the re- 
sult was "slavery/^ 

And to-day social agreement continues the prac- 
tice of that tyrant, Henry. Still treats land as a 
commodity of sale and purchase. Still gives the 
landlord power to exact a steadily increasing rent. 
Still gives him power to evict those who refuse or 
are unable to pay him toll. Still enables the land- 
lord to live in ease and luxury on the labor of other 
people, and make serfs and paupers of the indus- 
trial class. 

The conclusion is unanswerable, social agree- 
ment cannot successfully control the conditions of 
independent human life, the only fixed law which 
makes experimentally for more and better life 
among men.^^ 

THE LAW OF COLLECTIVE HUMAN LIFE. 

Now, the law of independent human life is also 
the law of human life in general. That which is 
true of "all men'' in the individual sense must also 
be true of "all men" in the collective sense. All 
men collectively must have intellectual, personal, 
and industrial freedom, which are, therefore, the 
essential elements of both individual and collec- 



U 



tive life. The law of individual life is simply for- 
tified and extended by collective action. Thus 
whilst individual industrial freedom secures for 
"all men'' individually little more than a ^'hare 
suhsistencCy^^ collective industrial freedom is able 
to satisfy the millions of intellectual and physical 
desires of "all men'' living in civilized communi- 
ties; and if this result is not reached, the failure 
cannot be charged upon the law but on its viola- 
tion and neglect. As access to land is an essen- 
tial element of individual life and freedom, so it 
must be an essential element of collective life and 
freedom, for without land no community can live 
or find material on which to operate." It is this 
inseparable relation of land to labor which gives 
the land such paramount importance, for unless 
"land" be equally free to all mankind, industrial 
freedom becomes impossible both to individuals 
and to mankind in general. 

Again, as the law of independent life secures to 
every individual the products of his own industry, 
to consume, to hoard, or dispose of at his will, so 
the law of collective life demands co-partnership 
in the products of collective industry, to be hoard- 
ed, consumed or disposed of by the collective will. 
The collective operators cannot appropriate and 
use the products of individual industry nor can in- 
dividuals appropriate and use the products of col- 

16 



lective industry. Either violates the general law 
of human life, which makes for more and better 
life among men. From this it follows that wher- 
ever there is co-operation in production, there 
must also in justice be co-partnership in result, 
and both become equally essential elements of the 
general law of human life. The nation, state, city 
or community which takes the products of indi- 
vidual labor without his consent and adequate 
compensation destroys individual freedom, and 
acts like a thief who robs him of the same, and as 
this is done by modern governments, they fail to 
make for more and better life among men. 

On the other hand, every individual who appro- 
priates the products of collective labor, and thus 
denies co-partnership in the collective result, is 
equally guilty of robbing the collective units. As 
this also is sanctioned and upheld by modern gov- 
ernments they fail on both accounts to make for 
more and better life among men. 

Now, it is not difficult to discover the source of 
collective products, nor where they go. They 
spring from the fact that in collective industry no 
individual can work for himself exclusively, be- 
cause the combined industry of two or more men 
is necessarily stronger and more efficient than that 
of the same two or more men acting separately 
each in his own behalf. Therefore, after award- 

17 



ing to each individual that portion of the collec- 
tive product which represents his individual exer- 
tion (technically called his wages) there is invari- 
ably a surplus produced by the co-operators in 
their corporate capacity, in which, nevertheless, 
the individuals have a co-partnership interest.^^ 
In the millions of complicated conditions of col- 
lective life and labor it is impossible to segregate 
the share of each producer in the collective result, 
but it is universally admitted that the larger part 
is faithfully conserved and concentrated in land 
value, and that it constitutes that increment of 
value which attaches to land in consequence of the 
increase of population, and is technically called 
^^rent."^^ Without collective industry land has no 
value and there is no "rent" — which "coeteris pari- 
bus" increases directly in proportion to the popula- 
tion. It is the collective industry of the popula- 
tion which alone produces it. It is the popula- 
tion who are co-partners and who are authorized 
by the general law of human life to hoard, con- 
sume or dispose of as they please, and as it cannot 
be equitably divided amongst the individual pro- 
ducers, it can only be applicable to the provision 
of their common wants, of which the current ex- 
penses of government is a fair example. Hence it 
is the only source of taxation provided by the gen- 
eral law of human life. It is the "Single Tax." 

18 



The result of this analysis of Mr. Henry George's 
premises justifies the conclusion that it is only by 
absolute obedience to the general law of inde- 
pendent and collective human life that we can 
hope to realize the inalienable right of all men 
equally to life, liberty and the pursuit of happi- 
ness (Jefferson), the satisfaction of human, intel- 
lectual and physical desires (H. George), or the 
making for more and better life among men (Jor- 
dan). 

LAND APPROPRIATION. 

Having thus established the general law of in- 
dependent and collective human life which "all 
men" must obey in order to live and prosper, it 
is permitted by the accepted canon of scientific 
procedure to substitute the "deductive'' for the 
"inductive" method, and to employ the general 
law as to the test of existing conditions and as a 
means of pointing out other lines of action which 
make for more and better life among men. 

And first with regard to "land." In order to 
state these conditions clearly I will relate a recent 
history of land appropriation. 

Within a few weeks of fifty years ago, a few 
hundred citizens of the United States landed on 
the western shore of San Francisco Bay. They 
found a nest of sterile sand-hills of no more value 
than the summits of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 



19 



They were free to take, and did take, all the sur- 
face they required for use. But not content with 
this, and under the paramount power and au- 
thority of the Government of the United States, 
the most perfect organization of social agreement 
in the world, they proceeded to appropriate to 
themselves and their heirs and assigns forever the 
exclusive ownership of ^^all the earth in sight." 

Had these citizens raised the peninsula from the 
depths of the Pacific Ocean by their own asso- 
ciated labor, the land would have been their own, 
and this appropriation would have been fully jus- 
tified; but as they found the sand-hills ready to 
their hands, it seems difficult to understand how 
any authority whatever or any deed or paper could 
confer upon any set of individuals the exclusive 
ownership of one of the essential conditions of 
human life, and of a portion of the earth specially 
adapted to the conditions of collective life. 

But in accordance with the law, they divided up 
the land into blocks, and the public official who 
conducted the appropriation still lives in San 
Francisco, and testifies that many hundreds of 
these blocks were given away to individuals with- 
out the payment of a cent, without even any guar- 
antee to use them, and at the sole cost of pens, ink 
and paper necessary for the completion of this 
strictly ^Hegal,^^ and according to jurists, states- 

20 



^ 



men and political economists, strictly ''rigMeous'^ 
action.'*^ 

That the land was valueless does not in any way 
alter the nature of the case. These citizens were 
legally created^'landlords/'and given absolute con- 
trol of what was already a necessity of associated 
life. They were endowed with the power of making 
serfs of ^'all men'' who should hereafter desire to 
occupy "tJieir land:' In straight English they 
were simply ^'landgrabbers/' legalized thieves of 
land which they did not make, and to the use of 
which they had no better title than any other set 
of men. They took advantage of the unrighteous 
law and practice of the United States to forestall 
the advent of an industrious population, already 
known to be on the way to San Francisco from 
every quarter of the globe; and to make all future 
immigrants pay toll for the privilege of occupy- 
ing these easily acquired "blocks," or to pay pur- 
chase money for the transfer of the right to collect 
this toll. These robbers are still at large, and 
still enjoy the protection of the "law" ! ! They, 
their heirs and assigns, still continue to exact a 
steadily increasing toll for the privilege of occupa- 
tion; still have the right to sell at a continually 
advancing price. Many of these landgrabbers 
withhold their blocks from use, because they are 
certain that with increasing population their 

21 



value will increase, and will ensure more rent. 
Nor is this practice confined to city "blocks.'^ Mil- 
lions of acres in the State of California are held by 
"landgrabbers" on the same title, not so much for 
present use and profit as for the prospective cer- 
tainty that an increase of population will give 
them higher rent or more purchase money for the 
privilege of taking it. 

But the "cinch" of these "landgrabbers'' was 
not exclusively confined to land considered as a 
place of residence. For he who controls the land 
controls the laborer who lives on it. From the 
moment of this appropriation, fifty years ago, un- 
til to-day, these landgrabbers have exacted toll 
from every laborer. Every coming ship brought 
more grist to the grabbing mill. Every man who 
did an hour's work, built a shanty, opened a store, 
or made a workshop ; every importer who brought 
in food and clothing, increased the value of their 
unoccupied, sterile blocks. And now every im- 
provement, whether made by individuals, corpora- 
tions, or the city government, brings gain to the 
grabbers of the rent. If a street is well paved, 
well lighted, and well cleansed by the public ser- 
vants, the rent of the houses will be higher than 
that of similar houses in a dirty, dark and ill 
paved street. A park created at the public cost 
raises the rental of the surrounding land. Car 

22 



lines have recently been constructed on two 
streets of San Francisco, and the abutting land 
assessment has been raised fifty per cent., all of 
which is, or will be, made the source of increased 
rent. The necessities of commerce have raised the 
value of land on the water front; the require- 
ments of retail business have done the same on 
Market street. Residential value is continually 
growing in the suburbs; and to-day a square foot 
of land in San Francisco is worth more than a hun- 
dred square miles upon the mountain tops. That 
which was valueless fifty years ago is now worth 
many hundred millions.^^ Here then is a huge 
fund, not created by these so-called owners, but by 
the co-operate activities and necessities of the en- 
tire community. A fund which under the general 
law of associated human life belongs to the co- 
partners who produced it, to be administered by 
social agreement for public purposes and in the 
interest of all the people. 

A fund which has been diverted from it lawful 
owners to the pockets of men whose individual in- 
dustry scarcely contributed a mite to the result. 
A fund which has enabled thousands to live in 
idleness and luxury at the expense of the poverty, 
misery and starvation of their fellow citizens. 

Consider for a moment what this co-partnership 
fund would have done for its real owners. The 

23 



current expenses of the municipal, state and fed- 
eral governments would have been a mere baga- 
telle. The municipal government might have 
erected gas works, water works, electrical v/orks, 
and street car lines. Light, electricity, w^ater and 
public transportation might have been free to all, 
whereas, these works have been erected by capital 
furnished by the rent belonging to the citizens and 
for the use of which the citizens now must pay. 
Public buildings not dreamed of in the palmy days 
of Greece and Rome could have been erected at 
the public cost; also, free schools, universities, 
libraries, theatres, museums, art galleries, parks 
and observatories; and a score of public utilities 
by which the co-partner profits might have been 
indefinitely increased. And at our public festi- 
vals we could have emulated the citizens of Potosi, 
by paving our streets with silver and adorning 
our public processions with gold and precious 
stones. And all this without taking one cent of 
taxation from individual industry. It is impos- 
sible to conceive the effect of the Single Tax on 
the morals and intellectual progress of the peo- 
ple, but it may be safely stated that the fear of 
poverty being gone the need of policemen, judges, 
jails, and poorhouses would have been reduced to 
a minimum.^^ 

Tested experimentally the existing relation be- 

24 



tween land and population is a grievous violation 
of the general law of human life. The vast fund 
created by co-operative industry, the administra- 
tion of which belongs to the population as co- 
partners, has been diverted by social agreement to 
individuals who have no claim. It is the object of 
the "Single Tax" to restore this fund to the control 
of its original producers, and thus relieve industry 
of the millstone of rent hung about its neck by 
landlords. Thus giving individual and collective 
workers the full enjoyment of the wealth they re- 
spectively produce. The fulfillment of the general 
law of human life is the only line of action which 
makes for more and better life among men. 

CONFUSION AS TO PROPERTY IN LAND. 

And here I have to note your stfitement '^that 
Mr. George falls back on his imaginary ethics 
whenever anyone asks him how he would make 
*land- public property, whether by buying it or 
seizing it, or taxing ownership out of existence, or 
how any of these methods could be made to 
work.^' I am indeed grieved to notice so complete 
a misapprehension of Mr. George^s doctrine. There 
is throughout Mr. George^s writings no proposal 
whatever to make land public property by buying 
it or seizing it, and, consequently, no attempt at 
explanation as to how either method could be 



25 



made to work. On the contrary, he states that a 
redivision of land is not possible, and if possible 
could not be permanent. That possession for use 
is necessary for the sower to reap his crop, or the 
builder to recoup the cost of the improvements he 
may make. He nowhere proposes to disturb the 
present occupiers of land; and insists that any 
such disturbance would amount to revolution. 

You seem to confound property in use with prop- 
erty in so-called ownership; and to suppose that 
ownership is necessary for land improvement and 
development. But this is not even a general ex- 
perience. Half London, including many hundreds 
of its finest palaces, half New York, and of many 
other cities have been constructed on land not 
owned by the builders.^^ The landlords of London 
and New York are not such fools as to alienate 
their perpetual right to constantly increasing rent. 
It remains only to governments like that of the 
United States to give away the national heritage 
for the price of pens, ink and paper, and enable 
landlords forever to collect a continually increas- 
ing toll on labor. It is quite true that Mr. George 
rests most of his arguments on the foundation of 
moral right, as when he states that a laborer is 
entitled morally to the products of his own in- 
dustry. And there are thousands who believe 
that this is the stronger ground, but a close analy- 



1 



sis distinctly proves that his ethics are not imagi- 
nary, and that his metaphors are supported by 
substantial facts, namely, those laid down at the 
beginning of this letter. 

Instead of demanding an accounting such as 
would be ordered by the Courts in the case of in- 
dividuals wrongfully^^ possessed of land, Mr. 
George proposes to let by-gones be by-gones, and 
the landlord having had his turn it is now more 
than time that the people, who have been so long 
defrauded of the product of their collective labor, 
and have suffered so deeply for the want of the 
"rent^^ which they have earned, should be restored 
to their collective heritage. 

Mr. George's proposal is just, clear and practi- 
cal. He desires that ^^all men" in their collective 
capacity should assume their undoubted right to 
the ownership of land, and that all men indi- 
vidually shall have equal opportunity to its use 
and occupation on the payment of rent represent- 
ing its value to the entire community. This rent 
to be collected as a single tax, and used to provide 
for common necessities and the satisfaction of 
common desires. The result, no doubt, will be the 
ultimate destruction of the landlord — a consum- 
mation devoutly to be wished. 

But Mr. George did not expect that the "rent'' 
could be taken from the landlords all at once. 

27 



They are much too powerful, and the masses of 
producers much too ignorant and venal. But the 
time is coming, and it is not far distant, when the 
producers of wealth shall have learned their 
"rights'^ under the general law of human life, and 
with the aid of universal suffrage and the ballot 
will not fail to take them. It is the duty of uni- 
versities to conduct the necessary change with 
wisdom and moderation. 

THE PBESENT CONDITION OF LABOR. 

Mr. George, in Progress and Poverty, described 
the present condition of the laborer in the lowest 
ranks of civilized society, whose life is spent in 
common labor, or in producing one thing or an in- 
finitesimal part of one thing, out of the multi- 
plicity of things that constitute the wealth of so- 
ciety. How he is a mere link in the enormous 
chain of producers and consumers; helpless to 
separate himself, and helpless to move except as 
they move. The worse his position in society the 
more he is dependent on society, the more utterly 
unable does he become to help himself. 

The very power of exerting his labor for the 
satisfaction of his most reasonable wants passes 
from his own control, and may be taken away or 
restored by the action of others, or by general 
causes, over which he has no more influence than 

28 



he has over the motions of the solar system. That 
under such circumstances he loses the essential 
quality of manhood. He becomes a slave, a ma- 
chine, a commodity, a thing in some respects lower 
than the animal, for he looks to crime and 
drunkenness as the only hopeful sources of relief. 
In the days of cannibalism, says Ingersoll, the 
strong devoured the weak, actually ate their flesh. 
In spite of all the laws that man has made, in spite 
of all the advances of science, the strong still live 
upon the weak,^^ the unfortunate, the foolish. 
True, they do not eat their flesh and drink their 
blood, but they live on their labor. The man who 
deforms himself by toil, who labors for his wife 
and children through all his barren wasted life, 
and goes to his grave without having tasted a sin- 
gle luxury, has been the food of others. The poor 
woman living in her lonely room, cheerless and 
fireless, sewing night and day to keep starvation 
from her child, is slowly being eaten alive by her 
fellow men.^^ When I take into consideration the 
agony of civilized life, the failures and anxieties, 
the tears and withered hopes, the bitter realities, 
the hunger," crime, drunkenness, ignorance and 
humiliation, I am almost forced to say that canni- 
balism, after all, is the most merciful form in 
which man has lived upon his fellow men. 



29 



In this connection Markham's great poem re- 
cently written, after seeing Millet's famous picture 
of The Man With the Hoe, deserves quotation ; 

Bowed by tlie weiglat of centuries tie leans 

Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, 

The emptiness of ages in his face, 

And on his back the burden of the world. 

Who made him dead to rapture and despair, 

A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, 

Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? 

Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? 

Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? 

Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? 

Is this the thing the Lord G-od made and gave 

To have dominion over all the land; 

To trace the stars and search the heavens for 

power; 
To fell the passion of Eternity? 
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns 
And pillared the blue firmament with light? 
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf 
There is no shape more terrible than this — 
More tongued with censure of the world's blind 

greed — 
More filled with signs and portents for the soul — 
More fraught with menace to the universe. 

What gulfs between him and the seraphim! 
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him 
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades? 
What the long reaches of the peaks of song, 
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? 
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; 
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop; 
Through this dead shape humanity betrayed, 
Plundered, profaned and disinherited, 
Cries protest to the Judges of the world, 
A protest that is also prophecy. 



30 



O, masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 

Is this the handiwork you give to God, 

This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? 

How will you ever straighten up this shape; 

Give back the upward looking and the light; 

Rebuild it in the music and the dream; 

Touch it again with immortality; 

Make right the immemorial infamies 

Perfidious wrongs, immediable woes? 

O, masters, lords and rulers in all lands. 
How will the future reckon with this man? 
How answer this brute question in that hour 
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? 
How will it be with kingdoms and with Kings — 
With those who shaped him to the thing he is — 
When this dumb error shall reply to God, 
After the silence of the centuries? 



This the truest and most forcible accusation 
ever launched by genius against the existing con- 
ditions of society. It is a fitting climax to Hood's 
"Song of the Shirt/' Burns' "O'er Labored Wight" 
and Mrs. Browning's impassioned cry to "Hear the 
Children Weeping." 

These only describe the pitiable facts, but the 
great merit of Markham's poem consists in his 
pointing out the cause, and its inestimable value 
lies in the fact that when the cause of any great 
evil becomes known and recognized by the masses 
of the people it is sure to be removed. 

Oh, landlords, masters, and rulers of the soil, is 
this the handiwork you give to God? It is by you 
humanity has been betrayed, plundered, profaned 
and disinherited. It is you who have shaped him 

31 



to be the thing he is. How shall it be with you 
when this dumb terror shall reply to God after the 
silence of the centuries? The man with the hoe 
is not a remnant of prehistoric times. The know- 
ledge of good and evil w^as man's first acquire- 
ment, a knowledge which the man with the hoe 
has lost. Barbarism never made a human being 
like him. No such creature is to be found among 
savage races. He is not a simple improvement 
on the monkey taught to use the hoe. His an- 
cestors were men, not monkeys. He is the natural 
brother of the honored among men, La Place, Des 
Cartes, Pasteur and a thousand others. 

He is not exclusively of French production. In 
many countries he is found in the garb of woman. 
He is found abundantly in Eastern Germany, 
where landlords are strong and powerful. 
Throughout England he is found in the very midst 
of civilization, and he is known in every village. 
His name is Hodge, and he is recognized by the 
ingenious deliberation of all his movements, for he 
has learned by dire experience to accurately adapt 
his expenditure of force to the measure of his bare 
subsistence diet. In the presence of his master he 
puts forth a little deceptive energy, but behind 
his back he rests upon his hoe and looks upon the 
ground. Moreover, he is here the last to escape 
from military service. He is the easy prey of the 

32 



recruiting sergeant. He takes the Queen's shilling 
in prospect of a mild debauch. He struts like a 
peacock in his scarlet uniform. Set up and drilled 
he becomes the sturdy backbone of the great mili- 
tary machine. In the ranks he is the ignorant but 
faithful comrade of the intelligent but more weak- 
ly soldiers drawn from the factories and slums. 
Endowed with the hereditary courage of the bull 
dog he attacks the enemy in front, and does not 
know when he is whipped. He is too big a fool to 
run away, and after he is prepared as food for 
powder he dies upon the battlefield without a mur- 
mur. Hodge was not created by the removal of 
the strong but by the pressure of the crafty on 
the weak. He is the victim of generations of ill 
usage and unceasing labor. Heredity has stamp- 
ed ignorance upon his mind and brutal degenera- 
tion on his body. He is the production of retro- 
gressive evolution. This type is found in various 
forms, and more or less developed in every rent 
ridden country upon earth, wherever landlords are 
privileged by law to suck out the brains and life 
blood of the people, and make them slaves of rent. 
The masters of the soil have fed upon his labor 
without shame or mercy, and have left him noth- 
ing but the hoe and bare subsistence. He was 
created man, and has been made a brute by un- 
controllable social forces. Worse housed than the 

33 



ox — stalled like the ox — goaded like the ox, he 
toils from early dawn till late at night. Like the 
ox he feeds and sleeps only to be able to renew his 
labors. Stolid and stunned he becomes dead to 
rapture and despair, a thing that grieves not, and 
that never hopes. From all the stretch of hell to 
its last gulf, there is no shape more terrible, more 
tongued with censure of the world's blind greed, 
more fraught with menace to the peace of all na- 
tions and the universe. 

These then are faithful descriptions of indus- 
trial bondage.^^ A bondage fastened down by the 
so-called law of wages tending to bare subsistence 
point. The law of wages described by Mill as 
"natural,''^^ the "iron law'' which bears the in- 
dorsement of the very highest names amongst pro- 
fessors of political economy. A law taught in 
text books, schools, and universities throughout 
the world; and yet, for all this, a law which has 
falsehood and damnation written on its very face. 
For it cannot be denied that every known general 
law of nature makes for more and better life 
among men,^° whilst this, the creation of social 
agreement, makes for starvation, misery and 
death. The facts afford the strongest condemna- 
tion of the so-called law. And who are the can- 
nibals who slowly eat up the lives and labor of 
the laboring classes? Who takes the wealth they 

S4 



individually and collectiyely produce? Are they 
not governments, landlords, millionaires, trusts 
and corporations?^^ Controlled by these selfish 
cormorants, social agreement, by obstructing ^'ac- 
cess to land," has knocked the bottom out of in- 
dustrial freedom, and is able to drive wages down, 
down, down, until the ^^bare subsistence" point is 
reached,and onlystops there becau.«e death putsan 
end to further robbery, and casts upon the canni- 
bals the cost of burial. And notice the result. 
In England one and a half per cent, of the adult 
population own eighty per cent, of the wealth, 
while eighty-seven and a half per cent, of the 
adult v/orking poor own only two per cent. In 
America nine per cent, of the adult population 
own seventy-one per cent, of the wealth, and sixty- 
three per cent, of the adult working poor own no 
more than nine per cent. The American cannibals 
have made good time in a hundred years and bid 
fair soon to overtake their English cousins.^^ 

Now, the industrial bondage of civilized human 
life is worse than that of chattel slavery. The 
slave was, at least, well cared for. He had the 
possibility of escape. There were lands in which 
he would be free. But the industrial slaves of 
modern life are made responsible for their own 
existence on a ^^bare subsistence" scale. In spite 
of education, in spite of individual skill and per- 



35 



sistent industry and thrift, not one in ten thou- 
sand can escape. Hundreds of thousands lose 
their health and lives in the hopeless struggle, and 
leave to their children the heritage of weakened 
constitutions.^^ In cities like London and New 
York whole streets are inhabited by adults with 
children's powers, children's ignorance, children's 
constitutions, earning children's wages, living on 
children's food, with children's ambitions, and yet 
without children's prospects of becoming men. 
The cannibals have eaten out the hearts of such 
communities, and left the husk to wither still on 
^'bare subsistence" law. What a mockery to tell 
these people, taxed to death, that they can im- 
prove their condition by education, industry and 
thrift. There is no possible escape from such 
bondage. Go where they will the "bare sub- 
sistence" wage will follow them. The landlord 
will deny them the use of land without the pay 
ment of his rent. The capitalist, whilst giving the 
"bare subsistence" wages, robs them of their col- 
lective industry, and in proportion as population 
and civilization grow in new countries so does in- 
dustrial bondage fasten on the people. But, as in 
the East, nineteen centuries ago, the morning star 
of love heralded the coming of the Great Prophet 
of universal brotherhood, that bond of co-partner- 
ship which is an essential element of the law of 



human life, so to-day has the western evening star 
of industrial freedom heralded the prophet of ma- 
terial prosperity and comfort as the outcome of 
obedience to the same great law. 

The prophet of California has forged the ham- 
mer which shall remove the fetters of industrial 
bondage and given the world the key which shall 
open the door to industrial freedom. Ridiculed by 
professors of political economy, despised by mod- 
ern Scribes and Pharisees, rejected by the Priests 
of Christian churches, and denounced by ignorant 
politicians, he spent a noble life, and suffered 
death in the cause of humanity.^^ But he brought 
glad tidings of great joy to suffering millions and 
the people heard him gladly. Already, after less 
than twenty years, the gospel of ^'Single Tax'' has 
been preached in every civilized community, and 
his disciples number millions.^"^ 

In England seven millions of co-operative and 
co-partner w orkers, the pick of the industrial com- 
munity, are followers of Henry George. For years 
past the great convention of English laborers, the 
most numerous, most intellectual and most power- 
ful labor organization in the world, has passed 
resolutions in favor of the taxation of land value 
(the Single Tax). And already the leading liberal 
statesmen are following suit. John Morley has 
declared that the taxation of land value will be 

. 37 



an issue at the next election. He is supported by 
Lord Roseberry, Sir Wm. Vernon Harcourt, Earl 
Carrington, Professor James Bryce and the Hon. 
Henry Asquith. Among the members of the Eng- 
lish House of Commons are Billson of Halifax, 
Pirie of Aberdeen, Sinclair of Forfar, Cameron of 
Glasgow, McGhee of South Meath, and Michael 
Davitt of Ireland, all of whom have been elected 
on the platform of the Single Tax. In Canada the 
workmen's conventions have annually adopted 
"Single Tax," and Sir Wilfred Laurier, the Pre- 
mier, says that all future legislation must be car- 
ried forward on the line of the "Single Tax." 

And now curiously Germany, the most conserva- 
tive power in Europe, has established the Single 
Tax as the only source of revenue in the most 
backward country in the world. In the new colony 
of Kiautchou, in China, the Minister of Marine 
made the following statement, "no colony has ever 
enjoyed such absolute freedom of production and 
trade as we have secured to Kiautchou. Not one 
single duty or tax will be imposed, except the 
taxes on land values. This measure has been dic- 
tated solely by politic-economical considera- 
tions." That the measure is popular is proved by 
the petiton presented to the British Government 
by the merchants, who are also land owners of 
Hong Kong, who, led by Mr. Mathieson, proposed 

38 



the abolition of all taxes and the substitution for 
the same of taxes on land values. 

Even in America men like Mr. Thomas G. Sher- 
man of New York, and the Hon. Tom L. Johnson 
vie with that old veteran of freedom — Wm. Lloyd 
Garrison — in advocating the Single Tax, whilst in 
New Zealand and New South Wales the principle 
is acknowledged and acted upon by both govern- 
ments. This is a pretty good showing for a theory 
founded on "mere figures of speech'^ and an argu- 
ment not worth "a straw's weight.''^^ 

THE LAND TAX AND BEER TAX. 

We are now prepared to discuss the question of 
paying the running expenses of government of 
which you say, "While the present way of paying 
the running expenses of government is very crude 
and faulty, and while the ^Single Tax' would have 
several advantages, it has also its drawbacks, and 
a land tax is no more God-given than a beer tax." 
But we have agreed that it is not a question 
whether God favors a land tax or a beer tax, al- 
though many would affirm that a beer tax would 
probably have the preference. There is, at least, 
one substantial difference between them. Land is 
not a product of human industry, whilst beer is, 
and this fact alone may determine which of the 
two is the better subject of taxation. The real 

39 



question is which will most equitably distribute 
the burden of taxation among all the tax payers, 
which will interfere least with industrial freedom 
and most favor the same in the larger field of col- 
lective industry? Which, in fact, is in most com- 
plete accord with the general law^^ of human life, 
the only law which makes for more and better life 
among men?^^ 

As "all men" derive their independent and col- 
lective lives, comforts, necessities and luxuries 
from land it follows that a tax on land value 
reaches every living being in proportion to the use 
he makes of it. 

The individual living and acting by himself and 
for himself alone, contributes nothing to land 
value, and is not called upon to pay running ex- 
penses of a collective government in which he has 
no place, and of which he has no need.^° But as 
soon as a government is needed by a growing 
poi)ulation rent is created, and the law of co- 
partnership, a most just and equitable law, steps 
in to determine that the collective product shall 
be set apart for collective use, of which current ex- 
penses of government are a part, and just as the 
needs of the population increase with increased 
poyjulation the fund expands^^ to meet their in- 
creased common wants. This seems to me a most 
wise and equitable arrangement, whereby the 

40 



1 



back is fitted to the burden, and the industry of 
individuals is set free to secure for themselves the 
full products of their individual exertion, and to 
pursue happiness by the gratification of their in- 
tellectual and physical desires. Surely this is an 
arrangement which makes for more and better life 
among men.^^ 

On the other hand, beer is a product of indi- 
vidual and collective industry. It requires the co- 
operation of farmers, malsters, brewers, coopers, 
wagoners and a thousand other people to produce 
and distribute a single glass. Rent is the surplus 
of their collective industry from which the single 
tax is paid. Thus beer pays its proportion of taxa- 
tion, leaving individual exertion free. But to pay 
a tax on beer directly is a violation of the law of 
individual freedom which secures for every laborer 
the absolute possession and disposal of the pro- 
duct of his own exertion;''^ that is, without 
licenses, taxation or other interference by social 
agreement with the gratification of individual de- 
sires. 

Nor is there any moral reason for a beer tax. 
Beer has been adopted by all civilized nations as a 
drink well suited to satisfy thirst and their civiliz- 
ed desires. It has been selected under the law of 
evolution, just as wheat, rice, meat and other arti- 
cles of diet. It is not in use by the stagnant and 

41 



effete nations of the earth — Turks, Arabs, Hin- 
doos and Chinese. For centuries it has formed the 
principal drink of the Anglo-Saxon race. Less 
than a hundred years ago, when tea and coffee 
were but little known, and less used, our ancestors 
drank beer for breakfast, beer for dinner, beer at 
supper, and beer at all their festivals. It was in 
universal use by all who could afford to brew or 
buy it. And with this habit the race has colonized 
the earth and become the leaders of civilization. 
But there are fanatics who prefer and advocate 
Turkish and Chinese abstinence. They say that 
there is "death in the pot," and that taxation is 
calculated to repress its use and reduce intoxica- 
tion. But if a "beer tax" was able to destroy 
drunkenness and secure universal sobriety, it still 
would not be true "that that which is best admin- 
istered is best" (Jordan), you would say that this 
is the maxim of tyrants and prohibitionists. That 
the making of manhood is more than the making 
of total abstainers. That temperance, which is 
self-government and suitable adjustment, makes 
men strong to use all the products of human in- 
dustry without abusing them, and it may be added 
that there are millions of human beings who are 
intemperate in water drinking; millions more in 
sugar eating, and that there is no "pot" on earth 
in which "death" may not be found by fools. 

42 



The conclusion is inevitable. The "land tax" 
conforms in all its details with the general law of 
human life, which makes for more and better life 
among men. And the tax on beer is robbery.** 

INDUSTRIAL BUCCANEERS AND INDUSTRIAL 
FEUDALISM. 

Now, we have seen that co-operation in produc- 
tion and distribution and co-partnership in the 
product and surplus created by co-operation are 
essentially complementary elements of the law of 
collective human life, and that in consequence of 
the intimate connection between land and labor 
the larger part of this surplus is taken by land- 
lords in the form of rent. But a little considera- 
tion will show that only the larger part goes in 
that direction. With a few honorable exceptions 
where the employers of collective labor, besides 
paying wages, divide the profits with their work- 
men, all such employers take the collective sur- 
plus to themselves;''^ thus, in making a contract for 
building a house, the contractor makes an estimate 
of the cost. He estimates all kinds of labor at the 
market price, including his own services and risks, 
the costs of materials, the interest on the capital 
required to provide the tools, transportation, etc. ; 
and, when every necessity has been estimated, he 
adds a percentage to the wages of every work- 

43 



man, which, in fact, is the surplus value of their 
collective industry. It is in this way that gigantic 
fortunes have been made in building railroads, 
public buildings, and public and private works of 
all kinds. 

Thus the law of co-partnership is evaded, and 
the surplus of collective industry seized by capital- 
ists and employers, who are the buccaneers of in- 
dustry.''^ Considering the vast number and im- 
portance of establishments of collective labor it 
is no wonder that contractors, manufacturers and 
employers become millionaires; and is it any won- 
der that they seek to extend their control of 
laborers by the establishment of trusts? Social 
agreement calls this enterprise, business, superior 
ability to organize labor; but is it not a taking ad- 
vantage of the ignorance of the laboring classes, 
who are taught to believe that wages are all they 
are entitled to, and that they have no part in the 
product of their combined exertion ?^^ Is it not, in 
fact, robbery?''^ Robbery of the same fund which 
goes to the landlord grabbing mill? The robbery 
of that wealth which individuals cannot create by 
their individual exertion, but w^hich is a necessary 
outcome of their collective industry. 

Now, experiment proves that co-partnership and 
co-operation make for more and better life among 
men.^^ There are to-day in Great Britain seven 

44 



millions of its population, more or less, engaged in 
co-operation and co-partnership. A picked seventh 
of the population doing a business, manufacturing 
included, of 272 millions of dollars a year, with a 
bank of their own with deposits of sixteen (16) 
millions, and turning over two hundred millions 
(200,000,000) in trade. Many years ago I heard 
Robert Owen lecture on industrial co-operation 
and co-partnership; his first attempt was a griev- 
ous failure, but he was followed by Holyoake, 
Kingsley, Maurice, Tom Hughes, Vansittart Neal, 
Kipon, Ludlow, Godin and Leclair, and to-day 
there is scarcely a town in England without a co- 
operative store for distribution; and some of the 
largest and finest factories there and in the world 
are now owned and managed exclusively by work- 
ing men, in the interest of the working men em- 
ployed. For further evidence I would refer you 
to the recently published account of Labor Co- 
partnership, by Mr. Henry Demorest Lloyd, who 
says, ^^that industrial democracy can become a fact 
whenever the people will it.'^^*^ The desire for 
property is universal, and the aptitude to manage 
it like "honor and fame from no conditions rise.^' 
Property, business and capital will never be prop- 
erly managed until the entire people have a share 
in management, ownership and results. 

From this it is evident that the law which ap- 

45 



plies to government applies to collective industry, 
viz., that no individual action can, by any possi- 
bility, replace the concerted action of the people 
(Jordan). Nor is the moral effect of co-operation 
and co-partnership less remarkable. Ralahine 
was a farm in the midst of one of the most tur- 
bulent districts in Ireland, where the people were 
ragged, hungry, lawless, and the lives of landlord 
and steward were in deadly peril. The owner was 
compelled to fly, and he left his estate in the hands 
of Mr. E. T. Craig, who explained to the laborers 
that henceforth they were to be their own masters ; 
divide the work amongst themselves, and all share 
in the produce. The very ringleaders of previous 
disorder became the best workers. A commercial 
system of life was adopted; the people went into 
associated homes. They worked well and success- 
fully. A co-operative store w^as opened, and labor 
notes were issued in the place of money. In three 
years the people became wonderfully changed. 
They left off drinking; they kept their homes 
clean; they paid the rent; disorder and violence 
ceased, intemperance became almost unknown. 
All had earned more than was paid by neighbor- 
ing farmers, and the incident which was termi- 
nated by the bankruptcy of the proprietor remains 
a splendid illustration of what can be accomplish- 



46 



ed when the principle of brotherhood is appealed 
to. 

THE EVIDENCE OF RESULTS. 

Although I most strenuously object to the posi- 
tion that a question of justice is only truly deter- 
mined by results, I can have no objection to in- 
quire if the single tax ^^has been tried, if it works, 
and if its results on individual and social develop- 
ment are better than those attained through other 
forms of land tenure or of taxation," and the less 
because the comparison is with forms which have 
utterly failed to secure good results, and which no 
one pretends are founded on the principle of 
justice between man and man. 

Now, it must be freely admitted that although 
the Single Tax was clearly promulgated by the 
French Physiocrats more than one hundred years 
ago, it has never yet been adopted in its entirety 
by any nation. On close examination, however, 
we shall find much evidence that its principle per- 
vades many customs and much legislation, and 
that in so far it has produced the best results. As 
the cardinal principle of the Single Tax lies in rent 
and its distribution, it will be desirable to exam- 
ine the various methods of dealing with rent, con- 
trasting the effects upon the welfare of individuals 
and the community at large. 

First, we have landlords pure and simple, en- 

47 



dowed with all the privileges of private owner- 
ship, who take all the rent, choose their tenants, 
and discharge them when they please. They have 
power to take all the traffic will bear, leaving the 
tenant nothing but a bare subsistence, and in 
special cases not even that. 

The evil results of this limited rent distribution 
are seen in Ireland. It is unnecessary to describe 
the frightful condition to which the Irish people 
were reduced about fifty years ago. Thousands 
died of starvation and disease, while millions were 
evicted from their miserable shanties and forced to 
emigrate. At length the conditions became so in- 
tolerable that a parliament of landlords was com- 
pelled to interfere, and to establish the Inalienable 
right of the inhabitants to live upon their native 
soil before anything was paid to landlords. The 
power to evict was taken from them, and under 
the operation of the courts rents have been re- 
duced more than one half, and the re-distribution 
of rent has greatly improved the condition of the 
people. The Irish are to-day more prosperous and 
more contented than for centuries. 

In the next place, all the privileges of full 
ownership may be exercised by corporations. 
These may be even worse than landlords because 
they are totally devoid of human sympathy. But 
when corporations are municipal and manage pub- 

48 



lie property, the rents are applied to provide for 
city needs. 

In Freudenstadt, a town of 1500 inhabitants, 
there is no taxation. The public revenue is de- 
rived from royalties, rents, and other natural 
sources of wealth attaching to the town and neigh- 
borhood. The revenue has always exceeded the 
expenditure. There are neither paupers in the 
community nor unemployed. On one occasion re- 
cently there was divided among the inhabitants 
men, women and children, a sum amounting to 
113.55 per capita. In England many municipal 
corporations either inherit it or have acquired 
land in the center of their cities. Old buildings 
have been torn down, new streets have been con- 
structed, and the land rented out on lease. In a 
few years the rents of such properties will relieve 
the citizens of much taxation. 

In the next place, the relation between owner 
and occupier may be determined by custom or by 
law, as under the feudal system, under w^hich the 
relation between lord and villein was definitely 
fixed, if not always faithfully kept. As the lord 
acknowledged his fealty to the king by personal 
service or the presentation of a pair of spurs, so 
the villein secured the protection of his lord by so 
many days of personal service or so much produce, 
and, having rendered his dues with punctuality, he 

49 



was left in peaceful occupation of his holding, and 
undisturbed possession of any surplus products 
which he might thereafter raise by his own in- 
dustry. Thorold Rogers has fully described the 
comfortable and happy condition of the English 
peasants before the introduction of landlordism, 
and the frightful economic pressure which imme- 
diately ensued. The land then, for the first time 
in England, was treated as private property, and 
the occupiers were evicted because they were un- 
able to pay interest on the purchase money. The 
Hon. Joseph Leggett has shown that the same 
causes have produced similar results in California. 
For the first twenty-five years after the first set- 
tlement land was open, and, except in cities, was 
cheap. The pressure of rent was very little felt, 
land was abundant, and the people few and con- 
tented. But when all the productive land was 
taken up, some for profit, more for speculation, 
rents began to rise and wages fall, for while land- 
lords exist laborers cannot appropriate both. 
Then economic pressure began to appear, the rich 
became richer, and the poor poorer. Then ap- 
peared armies of tramps and thieves, and the in- 
dependence of thousands was destroyed. 

In the next place, the multiplication of indi- 
vidual owners results in diffusion of the rent, and 
has chiefly occurred in France, through the opera- 

50 



tion of the code of Napoleon; but the benefits of 
rent diffusion are obscured and neutralized by ex- 
cessive military service and heavy industrial taxa- 
tion. Nevertheless, one remarkable result has 
been attained; the food production of France has 
increased in the last century fifteen times faster 
than the growth of population, a practical proof 
that the so-called law of Malthus is not absolute. 

In the next place, permanent occupiers may also 
be part owners, portions of rent being assigned to 
other persons on definite terms fixed by law. This 
form of land tenure has been in operation in the 
Channel Islands for a thousand years. The island 
of Jersey has never been subject to the Roman 
law, and therefore, there are still no landlords. 
The escape from landlordism was probably due to 
the poverty of the soil, which, until lately, was not 
able to support the inhabitants, much less to yield 
a surplus for the payment of rent. In the seven- 
teenth century, as may be seen from the first edi- 
tion of Falle's Jersey (1694), the island did not pro- 
duce the quantity of food required by the inhabi- 
tants, who were supplied from England in time of 
peace, and from Dantzig in time of war. In the 
groans of the inhabitants of Jersey we find the 
same complaint. And Quale, in 1812, stated that 
the quantity of food was quite inadequate to their 
sustenance, apart from the English garrison. 

61 



After making, sayw Ik^ all allowances, tlio truth 
nmsl be 1<)I<], I he graiu crops Jirc foul, in Home in- 
stances (execrably so. We learn also from recent 
writers that the soil is by no means rich. It is a 
decomposed <;ranitc, without organic matter, be- 
sides what nijin has i>ut into il. Tln^re are also 
seventy acres of an Arabian desert of sands and 
hillocks, wilh very ])ooi* soil on the north and 
west of it. Nor is the climate as favorable as 
mi^ht have been expected. '^Fhere is an absence 
of sun-heat in summer, a remarkable prevalence of 
Jersey fogs, brinj^inj;- mildew and bli^i^iit in au- 
tumn, and much dry, cold, east wind, retarding 
vegetation in spring. 

Land in J(^rsey has been held f()r centuries in 
small lots of a few acres. In the whole island 
there are not more than six farms of more than 
twenty-live acres, and upon these the celebrated 
Jersey cows are raised. The owner of t h(^ lot is 
permitted by law and custom to issue "rents^^ to 
the extent of three-fourths of the value of the hold- 
ing. These "rents'^ represent a small pro])ortion 
of the crop of wheat as raised a thousand years 
ago, when the soil was even more barren than at 
the beginning of this century, and the art of agri- 
culture was much less advancinl. So faithfully 
has this custom been i)reserved that the money 
payment equivalent to that small modicum of 

62 



wheat secures to the occupier permanence of occu- 
pation. The possession of land is therefore abso- 
lutely safe to every cultivator, and cannot easily 
be alienated. To seize land for debt is accom- 
panied with so many difficulties that it is seldom 
resorted to. The part owner and occupier cannot 
be compelled, as in the case of mortgage, to re- 
fund the principal. The laws of inheritance are 
also such as to preserve the homestead to the 
children, notwithstanding all or any debts the 
father may have incurred before his death. Cus- 
tom provides also that the purchaser for cultiva- 
tion undertakes to pay only a capitalized one- 
fourth of the total rent, and he often pays less; 
people are thus able to buy land for cultivation 
with very little capital, and the cost of conveyance 
is almost nothing. As there are no landlords on 
the island, there is no one to watch the crops, or 
raise the rent, no one to fix the terms of lease, no 
one to dictate the course of cropping:, no one to 
raise the rent as population grows, every tiller of 
the soil is his own master, and occupies his little 
holding without interference from any one. While 
every occupier is an independent owner there are 
hundreds of other citizens who have an interest in 
rent, but without x)ower to distrain for non-pay- 
ment of the principal. Here then we have a clear 
recognition of the principle that rent belongs to 

53 



the people, and a rough and unscientific method 
of distributing it among the population. In fact, 
the Norman custom is an imperfect Single Tax. 

Other common privileges have also been careful- 
ly preserved. Every one is at liberty to gather sea- 
weed for manure at a certain season of the year, 
and to dig sand at a distance of sixty feet from 
high water-mark. 

And now let us notice the result. The island is 
eight miles long and less than six miles wide; it 
comprises 28,707 acres, rocks included. There are 
1300 inhabitants to the square mile, or two to 
every acre, and, besides providing their own food, 
they now annually export |250 worth of produce 
from every cultivated acre. In 1894 they export- 
ed 60,605 tons of potatoes, grown on 7,007 acres, 
and for these they received about |2,300,000. They 
also exported 1600 head of cattle, chiefly cows, bulls 
and horses, and many tons of tomatoes, pears, 
<salads and other produce. This success is entirely 
due to the amount of labor which a dense popula- 
tion is putting on the land. The fertility of the 
soil has been created by the industry of the in- 
habitants; it has been fertilized not only by sand 
and seaweed but with refuse of all kinds, inclusive 
of animal manures, city waste, stable manure, 
bones shipped from Plevna, and mummies of cats 
from Egypt. The ground is artificially warmed 

54 



by the application of fermenting matters, and hot 
water pipes. An artificial climate has been created 
by the construction of acres of glass roofing, and 
the growth of the crops is promoted by the scien- 
tific manufacture of soils, the careful selection of 
seeds, and frequent replanting of the plants. 
These people realize the fact that it is easier and 
more profitable to raise ten tons of potatoes from 
three acres than it is from thirty. As there are 
no landlords the whole of the profit is distributed 
among the producers and the large number of per- 
sons interested in rent. It would be strange, in- 
deed, if the Jersey islanders, densely crowded as 
they are, were not among the happiest, most pros- 
perous, and most contented people in the world, 
which is the conclusion of every one who visits 
them. There is no poverty, except that which is 
personally produced; no pauperism; no unem- 
ployed; very little dishonesty or crime. 

Here then we have positive proof that economic 
pressure is caused by landlords, and that it will be 
relieved by the Single Tax. 

And now turn to cases where the tax on land 
values has been recently imposed. In New Zea- 
land, the Legislature of 1891 imposed a graduated 
tax on land values, the lowest being ,04 per cent. 
For twenty years previously the country passed 
through a period of fearful commercial depression. 

55 



It was overwhelmingly in debt, and the popula- 
tion was decreasing at the rate of twenty thou- 
sand a year. After the adoption of this form of 
taxation prosperity immediately returned, popula- 
tion began to increase, and the annual increase is 
now greater than the annual decrease before the 
passage of the act. United States Consul Connolly 
says of New Zealand, that it is now the most pro- 
gressive country upon earth. That the private 
wealth of the people has increased over forty per 
cent., which is double the increase of population. 

After five years' experience the New Zealand 
government extended the method of taxation to 
those municipalities which should choose it in 
preference to the older plan. Twenty municipali- 
ties have voted in its favor, and it is remarkable 
that the reform has been carried by the vote of 
property owners, and not by equal suffrage. 

In 1895, the Legislature of New South Wales, 
having been thoroughly convinced of the success- 
ful reforms in New Zealand, passed a law abolish- 
ing all taxation on personal property and improve- 
ments, and levying four milles on the dollar on 
land value instead. Prior to the passage of the 
law the financial condition of the country verged 
on bankruptcy, and the people suffered great pri- 
vation. One-half of the land was owned by less 
than one thousand people. 900,000 souls, men, 

56 



women, and children, had not land enough in 
which to dig their graves. Immediately the large 
land speculators became alarmed. An English 
syndicate, which had acquired many thousand 
acres, put them on the market. Many large es- 
tates of 100,000 acres were readily disposed of in 
small lots, and in 1897 the increased area of land 
under cultivation was already 311,500 acres. 

Landlordism still flourishes in the adjoining 
colony of Victoria, where the population is about 
the same, and where there is a high protective 
tariff. The contrast is convincing. In Victoria 
there are employed, in various trades, 37,779 males 
and 12,669 females. But in New South Wales 
there are employed 50,883 males, and only 6,689 
females. For every ten ships docked and repair- 
ed in Victoria there are seventy in New South 
Wales. The deep sea ships in the Victoria har- 
bors number between twenty and thirty, while in 
New^ South Wales they number between ninety 
and one hundred. During a period of years, 5180 
more men left Victoria than arrived, while New 
South Wales attracted 192,184 more than those 
who left. In New South Wales, both artisan and 
unskilled laborers are feeling the advantage of 
better times. The supply of workers is less than 
the demand, and the employee is the arbiter of 
his own compensation. In no other period has the 

57 



value of imports been so great, its manufacturing 
output so large, and general prices and wages so 
satisfactory as during the two years just passed. 
The Premier said, on a recent occasion, small as 
the change has been, it has secured to the country 
for all time a good, sound principle of taxation, 
and it has killed the trade of the land gambler. 
In 1901 tariff on imports will entirely cease. 

A most remarkable experiment with the Single 
Tax was made at Hyattsville, Md. In 1892 the 
town commissioners, believing they had power un- 
der the town charter, decided to assess land values 
only, so they abolished all taxation on improve- 
ments and personal property. In order to meet 
the loss of revenue the tax on land value was 
raised from fifteen to twenty-five cents on the hun- 
dred dollars. The effect was to reduce the taxa- 
tion of householders forty-four per cent., and to 
raise the balance of sixty per cent, on land held for 
speculation and not for use. The effect was imme- 
diately beneficial ; it lightened the burden of those 
most worthy of consideration. It promoted the 
improvement of property, the erection of new 
buildings and the employment of the people. 
There was no difficulty in the application of the 
>system. The land speculators, however, set up 
violent opposition, and took the matter into the 
courts; and, it being declared unconstitutional, 

58 



the town was compelled to return to the old sys- 
tem. All building immediately came to an end 
when the land speculators resumed their sway. 
These results are all in favor of the Single Tax. 

THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE LAW OF HUMAN 
LIFE. 

It is the special function of universities to ex- 
amine and illustrate those general laws which con- 
trol the operations of the universe. To teach 
their order, correlation, beauty, adaptability to 
surrounding conditions, their sufficiency and per- 
fection, their justice and morality, and to show 
how completely and surely they make for more 
and better life among men, whilst the least viola- 
tion or neglect makes of necessity for starvation, 
misery and death. 

Are the universities of America fulfilling their 
duties with respect to the law of human life? They 
seem ready and willing to acknowledge the value 
of intellectual and personal freedom, but have 
they put industrial freedom on an equal footing?^ 
It would seem not; nay, rather are they not fol- 
lowing the practices of the European universities 
of the last century? And just as those universities 
directed all their efforts to restrain intellectual 
and scientific freedom, so now those of America 
are using their great powers to strangle industrial 

59 



freedom. None of these institutions, whose office 
is to extend the range of freedom, offer a protest 
against the artificial privilege of landlords. None 
are protesting against industrial feudalism, which 
is industrial tyranny. They have nothing to say 
on the absolute necessity of co-partnership in the 
results of collective labor as the only possible pro- 
tection against the rapacity of governments, mil- 
lionaires, trusts and corporations. They have 
failed to demonstrate the wickedness and folly of 
taxing individual industry as if it were a crime to 
work and create wealth. 

They seem to sanction all those methods of taxa- 
tion which bring lying and dishonesty in their 
train, and enable the rich to shift the burden on 
the poor. Common sense should tell them that 
all such methods make for starvation, misery and 
death, and that absolute obedience to the law of 
human life alone makes for more and better life 
among men.°^ In this, its first duty, the Univer- 
sity of California, like those of America generally, 
is a grievous failure, and even Stanford, the most 
liberal, is by no means innocent. 

It is significant that you should have so griev- 
ously misapprehended Mr. George's argument. 
That you should charge him with scientific igno- 
rance possibly without having read his last great 
scientific work. That you should find his premises 

60 



faulty and founded on figures of speech, when they 
are based on simple self-evident facts. That you 
should say that he takes out at the end only that 
which he puts in at the beginning, while in reality 
he puts in the beginning the simple facts of human 
life, and in justice between man and man takes out 
the Single Tax. 

That you should regard his argument as not 
worth a straw's weight, whereas it involves the 
foundation of all human progress. It is no won- 
der that his last and greatest work on the ^'Science 
of Political Economy'^ is not in the Stanford li- 
brary; and that the law of human life should be 
utterly ignored in the class-rooms, and is replaced 
by a study of the dreams of the French physiocrats 
of the last century; and this not for the purpose 
of picking out from all their writings those grains 
of w^heat, the "produit net" and ''impot unique," 
and of illustrating these grains of truth with the 
assistance of Mr. George's wisdom, but with the 
certain result that, without that wisdom, the stu- 
dents' intellects will be buried in the mass of chaff. 
And lastly, it seems to me incomprehensible that 
you should rely upon that inscrutable, uncertain, 
weak, mythical principle, ''social agreement," as 
the authority for what is ''right" when you have 
before you a simple law of nature which makes 
for more and better life among men, and the small- 

61 



est neglect of which makes for starvation, misery 
and death. 

It is painful to write these facts, but for you 
"truth'^ has no terrors, no humiliations, and it is 
necessary to probe to the bottom of the wound in 
order to effect a cure. 

But this neglect of Mr. George's doctrine is the 
more remarkable at Stanford, because here, as 
always, interest is co-incident with obedience to 
natural law and duty. The Stanford estates suffer 
most grievously from the unjust system of taxation 
now in force, and from which there is but little 
hope of relief, except by the adoption of the ''Sin- 
gle Tax,'' under which no rent can be taken from 
land in public use, of which the most important is 
the promotion of higher education. Rent taken 
away from such an institution is the worst form of 
robbery, and there is no possible excuse for it un- 
der the operation of the ''Single Tax." It is true 
that the appropriation of land to public use is only 
a restoration of what belongs to the people, but 
this restoration was none the less a royal gift 
made by the founders of the Stanford University.^^ 
By it they renounced forever their artificial right 
as landlords, and gave back to the community that 
which the community had earned. But they did 
more, for they carried out the principle of the 
"Single Tax'' to its uttermost point, and did, by 



the stroke of the pen, that which elsewhere must 
take many, many years to accomplish; and verily 
they shall have their reward, for the arrangement 
cannot be upset, and as the years roll by, and the 
population shall increase, the resources of the 
University are bound to grow in proportion to its 
need. What glory, what honor shall attach for- 
ever to such unselfish fulfillment of a general law 
as yet not recognized? 

CONCLUSIONS. 

In the foregoing I have endeavored to keep the 
main argument clear, short, and to the point. As 
Mr. George says, ^'We cannot if we would, we 
should not if we could, eschew the use of meta- 
phor, but in questions of political economy it is 
necessary to base all metaphors on facts. "^"^ 

I have shown that human life, happiness and 
progress depend upon the complete and faithful 
observance of the general law of independent and 
collective life. That this law is violated by the 
enactments and practices of social agreement, 
which cannot be accepted as an authority for 
^'right."^^ That the violation of the general l^w 
of human life, even in the least particular, makes 
for starvation, misery and death. That the crea- 
tion by social agreement of an artificial landlord 
class, endowed with power to deny "access to 



land/' is destructive of industrial freedom, and 
that the appropriation of the product of collective 
industry by landlords, millionaires, trusts, cor- 
porations and individual employers is robbery. 
That co-operation in production and co-partner- 
ship in the collective result are essential elements 
of the law of collective human life. That the la- 
borer to be really free must attain to self-employ- 
ment as an individual, and self-government as a 
member of the collective body, sharing in the pro- 
fits and management not as a favor but a right, 
sanctioned by the law of human life. That the 
taxation of individual industry is a violation of 
the law of individual freedom, and the final con- 
clusion is that the ^'Single Tax'' on land value, 
which is created by the collective activities and 
necessities of the whole community, is the source 
provided by the law of human life for the satisfac- 
tion of the common wants, no one being called 
upon to suffer loss individually on account of pub- 
lic need. 

As under the ^'Single Tax" no one will care to 
have land except for possession and profitable use, 
millions of acres will be opened to the people. 
There will no longer be need to camp out for weeks 
upon the borders of land open to occupation. No 
longer need to fight and race and struggle for 
whereon to live, for "/ree aocess^^ will become a 

64 



fact, and free materials will everywhere be found 
at the disposal of collective life. 

Lastly, the law of independent and collective 
human life is the only complete and absolute 
basis of economics. It defines the origin of indi- 
vidual and collective wealth, and determines the 
rights of the respective owners in its distribution. 
It makes impossible the formation of trusts and 
combinations, which, under the pretense of better 
organization of capital and labor, and the promise 
of cheaper production, rob the producers of their 
individual and collective earnings. It gives the 
land and its natural resources to the whole people 
by the operation of the Single Tax, and thus de- 
stroys monopolies at their very roots; in fine, it 
makes for more and better life among men, and 
becomes a safe guide for statesmen, governments 
and professors of political economy throughout 
the world. 

AN INDUSTRIAL UTOPIA. 

You have wisely told your students that the 
Utopian element is one which our lives sorely 
need. That we have fought the devil long enough 
with fire. That we have attempted good results 
by evil means (social agreement, expediency, im- 
perialism, landlords, trusts, bare subsistence 
wages, industrial taxation, licenses, franchises, 

65 



and other special privileges, tariff and other inter- 
ferences with the law of independent human life) ; 
that unless our souls dwell in Utopia, life is not 
worth the keeping; that our windows should look 
toward Heaven, not the gutter. Now, with the 
help of the general law of human life it does not 
seem difficult to construct an industrial Utopia, 
which being the foundation of life is also the foun- 
dation of all human progress.'^ Let us suppose the 
creation of a huge industrial corporation to ex- 
ploit the earth. To become a shareholder it is 
only necessary to be a human being, endowed with 
intelligence and strength, who pledges his labor 
in return for life and the satisfaction of his wants. 
Every worker getting his w^ages according to the 
law of supply and demand, and those special con- 
ditions which determine the value of the service 
rendered. If but little service, bare subsistence; 
if more, comfort, leisure and the gratification of 
desires; if great, and rendered to the corporation, 
honor, glory, repose and luxury. 

The charter of this corporation is the law of in- 
dependent and collective human life, as laid down 
in the foregoing pages. Every individual must be 
free to think, to act, and to assist in the business 
of the corporation, the exploitation of the earth, 
and be free to consume, hoard and dispose of his 
wages according to his will, whilst the surplus 

66 



created by collective labor shall be gathered by 
the Single Tax, and distributed to tne collective 
producers, not in personal dividends, but in pro- 
vision for collective necessities and the gratifica- 
tion of collective desires. 

The construction of the government of this cor- 
poration must be democratic."^ That is, exactly 
that of a private business corporation. No indi- 
vidual action must be permitted to replace the con- 
certed action of the people. 

Nor need we forget that Utopia is beyond the 
reach of human action. That evil and death are 
as permanent as gravitation, and will forever re- 
main essential elements of growth and progress. 
It is not our business if we never reach perfection. 
All men must be free to choose between good and 
evil, and we must be content with the rule of the 
majority. We may be assured, however, that the 
majority is for the most part right, and that our 
individual duty is to promote justice between man 
and man, and thus advance the brotherhood of all 
mankind. Now, I confidently claim your assist- 
ance in promoting this Utopian idea. It is exact- 
ly the form of government to which you were con- 
verted in relation to municipal affairs. It is the 
form of government adopted by business corpora- 
tions and by English cities. I ask your assistance 
to teach it in your schools, that its operation may 

67 



be extended to counties, States, and nations. This 
is ''the ideal arrangement, although, perhaps, im- 
possible. If it is impossible, it must become pos- 
sible somehow before we can get on" (Jordan). 

But nothing is impossible which is founded on 
truth, justice and natural law. Past experience 
proves it. One now can scarcely believe that only 
fifty years ago men were shot down and imprison- 
ed for advocating vote by ballot and universal suf- 
frage, and by honorable men, who believed their 
adoption to be impossible in England! Who could 
have anticipated the abolition of slavery in the 
United States fifty years ago? Even thirty years 
ago who could have dreamed that men would 
speak to each other a thousand miles apart? So, 
with or without the aid of universities, Industrial 
freedom must ultimately prevail, because it is 
founded on truth and justice and the law of 
human life. It is obedience to this law which con- 
stitutes true religion, and I would call upon the 
clergy of all denominations to adopt it as the basis 
of their teaching. This law provides the true 
remedy for ignorance, poverty, and immorality, 
and is the only safeguard against starvation, 
misery and death. This law promises the realiza- 
tion of that glorious document — ^the Declaration 
of Independence — which states so clearly that all 
men have equal right to life, liberty and the pur- 

'68 



suit of happiness. This law which alone gives 
right to all men equally to gratify their physical 
and intellectual desires (Henry George). This law 
which is so well expressed in the motto of Eng- 
lish co-partners "each for all, and all for each." 
This law which assuredly makes for more and bet- 
ter life among men (Jordan). This law which de- 
clares the equality of all men before natural law, 
and is the foundation of the brotherhood of all 
mankind. STALLARD. 



APPENDIX. 



2Vo#e /. — Adequate intelligence and adequate 
strength are not combined in the same man. (J.) 

Men in general are neither idiots nor invalids. 
Man has nothing else to depend upon but intelli- 
gence and strength. (S.) 

Note 2. — Labor is also exerted on labor or the 
past results of labor, also a form of industry. (J.) 

Labor cannot be exerted on labor only. There 
can be no labor without land or its products. (S.) 

'Note 3. — Only by exchange. But one can be ex- 
changed for another and must be in social co- 
operation. (J.) 

But we are now discussing individual, inde- 
pendent life, and exchange is necessarily excluded 
from the argument. (S . ) 

Note J/. — Not in the tropics, nor when incentives 
are withdrawn by social force. (J.) 

We are still discussing individual life, but even 
in the tropics food does not fall into his open 
mouth. He must also tramp and beg when social 
incentives are withdrawn. (S.) 



Note 5. — But lacking intelligence, he begs this 
article; his slavery is endemic, not the result of 
force. (J.) 

Nevertheless, many intelligent and highly edu- 
cated men may and do become absolutely desti- 
tute, often the result of uncontrolable forces. 
Under present conditions they are compelled to 
beg for food or work. How many thousands have 
done so? How many masters of arts are cow- 
boys in Texas? (S.) 

Note 6. — Your argument that trees have not 
equal access to land seems to me without force. 

(S.) 

It is without force, but so is the statement that 
men have a divine or any other right to equal ac- 
cess. Trees, as individuals, are certainly depend- 
ent on access to land, men are not. (J.) 

My statement is not that men have a divine or 
any other right to equal access to land, but a state- 
ment of simple fact, viz., that access to land is an 
essential condition in the maintenance of inde- 
pendent human life. Both men and trees exist on 
the conditions supplied by land, and would die 
without them. Equal access is simply an im- 
possibility, and were it possible could not be main- 
tained. This is nowhere proposed by Henry 
George. But the right or title of all men to access 

71 



to land must be equal in order to secure to all men 
the possibility of living, and this equality is simple 
justice between man and man. Nor is it necessary 
that all men should be farmers, miners, or market 
gardeners to secure access to land, for it is obvi- 
ous that access does not depend on the fact of occu- 
pation. The taking of rent affords an equal 
guarantee. Landlords have complete access to 
land by taking rent even when they are absentees. 
Rent is wealth created by the community at large, 
and by putting the community into the landlord's 
shoes every citizen gets access to land and shares 
both in the creation and expenditure of rent, no 
matter what his trade or occupation. Thus is sim- 
ple justice between man and man secured by the 
operation of the single tax. (S.) 

2Vofe 7. — Trees are not endowed with intellect or 
active strength. (S.) 

Neither are many men. Men must exchange one 
for the other. (J.) 

Animals without intelligence or strength cannot 
be classed as men. Exchange is a necessity of 
collective, not of independent human life. Robin- 
son Crusoe had no opportunity to make exchange 
until Friday came to him. (S.) 

Note 8. — If all men depended on themselves for 
choice the world would be scantily populated. (J.) 

72 



There is no need for universal independence. 
Men gain too much from social intercourse and co- 
operation. (S.) 

'Note 9. — Once armed with the independent op- 
portunity of maintaining life by the employment 
of his own labor upon land, a man, however desti- 
tute, is really free. (S.) 

Not all. Robinson Crusoe could have suffered 
from almost any of the known forms of misery. 

(J.) 

True; but misery is not an essential condition of 
human life, and although a prisoner on the island, 
Crusoe exerted his intellect and strength on land 
and was made free to live. He was his own 
master. (S.) 

Note 10. — He is no longer at the mercy of em- 
ployers. (S.) 

But he is at the mercy of brains. (J.) 

While he has the independent opportunity of 
maintaining his own life by his own labor exerted 
upon land, he is at the mercy of nothing but su- 
perior force. Even then he remains master of 
himself. (S.) 

Note 11, — If all men could get at the land, and 
could live when they got there, the earth would be 
too small to support them. There is much bad 

73 



land, unproductive land, malarial land. Only the 
best tillage on good and healthy land, with brains 
in direction, will make civilized life. (J.) 

This may or may not be true. But we are dis- 
cussing the conditions of independent human life, 
not the progress of civilization or the future of the 
race. Nevertheless, the limit of production is not 
yet known. In East Flanders thirty thousand 
people live on thirty-seven thousand acres, all 
taken, and besides they manage to support 10,720 
head of horned cattle, 3,800 sheep, 1815 horses, 
6,550 swine, and to export flax and other agricult- 
ural produce. In one hundred years the food pro- 
duction of France has increased fifteen times 
faster than the growth of population — a practical 
proof that the so-called law of Malthus is not in- 
fallible. (S.) 

LAW AND JUSTICE. 

'Note 12. — The law of independent human life 
provides the only line of action which secures the 
independent existence of human beings. (S.) 

There is no such line of action — most of all de- 
pends on the being, his health and heredity. The 
law of independent life does not follow from the 
observed facts. You use nowhere the inductive 
method except in a few illustrations. Your real 
argument rests on an invention like ''similia 

74 



similibus'-; in other words, you are guided by 
an assumed divine law. never yet tried except 
in part, and which you have discovered through 
" a priori" reasoning. There is no law which 
says, "This ought to be 'thus and so,' but is 
not. There are many (a priori) schemes of human 
life. You overlook the fact that the great prob- 
lems are psychological, physiological and ethical 
rather than economic. I respect truth, but not 
the "a priori'' method of reaching for it. That 
yields truth sometimes, but gives no test by which 
we can tell truth from moonshine. "Scientific 
men," says Professor Brooks (and I endorse his 
statement), "repudiate the opinion that natural 
laws are 'rulers' and 'governors' over nature, and 
look with suspicion on all 'necessary' or 'universal' 
laws." Man has never found out such. Certainly 
such laws are not rulers. We must rule ourselves 
within the limits of our environment, which is 
made up of cause and following effects. 

I deny that all known natural laws make for 
more and better life among men. There are laws 
of decay as well as laws of growth. 

We have not reached a point where deductive 
argument can prove anything to be trusted in 
human conduct. 

What justice is can only be found out by experi- 
ment and attained only by the slow growth which 

75 



is possible under governmental forms. I know of 
no way of getting at justice through the applica- 
tion of universal laws, because no such laws can 
bring credentials. 

If, as Dr. Warner says, putting air in private 
hands would yield a better supply on juster terms 
there is no divine reason why we should not turn 
the atmosphere over to an air company. (J.) 

If the skies fall we shall catch larks, but in my 
premises there is no ^'if." It is simple fact that 
men are animals endowed with intelligence and 
strength, and by exerting that intelligence and 
strength on land they obtain food and maintain 
existence. These facts form an impregnable basis 
of inductive argument. But in order to show that 
ethics, psychology and heredity have nothing 
whatever to do with the simple maintenance of life 
I will put the question in a simpler form. Thus: 
Men are land animals, and fish are water animals. 
Human and fish life depend, respectively, on the 
conditions to be found in land and water. Now 
life, land, and water are here metaphors. They 
mean more than the simple words express, but 
they are convenient and necessary and save long 
descriptions of well known facts; and the facts 
are that men live on land, and fishes in the water. 
This is no invention of mine. There is here no 



76 



baseless hypothesis like "similia similibus," no "a 
priori" reasoning, no assumed divine law (whatever 
that may mean), no reference whatever to the pur- 
poses of nature, and I simply state the self-evident 
facts that men are born and live on land and fishes 
in the water. These facts a child can understand 
and no philosopher can doubt. 

Now, natural law is the constant relation be- 
tween definite antecedent facts or conditions 
(causes) and definite consecutive results (effects). 
Under this definition, to live on land is a natural 
law of human life, and to live in w^ater is a natural 
law of fish life. Exactly the same reasoning ap- 
plies to material bodies. The mutual attraction 
between two of them constitutes the natural law 
of gravitation. No reasoning can get closer to 
the facts; it is induction pure and simple. If not, 
I give the question up. But the law of human life 
as it depends on land, and the law of fish life as it 
depends on water, is not the whole law of life any 
more than the mutual attraction of two bodies is 
the whole law of gravitation; for as in the one case 
the antecedent conditions and consecutive results 
are definitely modified by density and distance, so 
in the others are the laws of human and fish life 
definitely modified by the million different influ- 
ences with which they come in contact. But the 
fundamental law in all three cases remains con- 

77 



stant and intact. If fishes do not get at water they 
die; if men do not get at land they starve to death. 
And two material bodies, if not mutually attract- 
ed to each other, would remain separate. The 
maintenance of fish life, like that of human life, 
is, therefore, purely and simply a question of eco- 
nomics. The Yv'^ater must be open to the industry 
of fishes, just as land must be open to the industry 
of men, and under these natural conditions only 
life is safe. It is simply nonsense to speak of the 
psychological, ethical and hereditary problems of 
fishes as involved in the maintenance of fish life, 
and it is difficult to define the age when they begin 
to operate in man, but it is clear that they have no 
more to do with the simple maintenance of human 
life than they have with moonshine. 

In this there is no intention to ignore the import- 
ance of psychology, ethics and heredity in the 
the development of individual character and social 
life, but we are discussing the simple question of 
maintaining human existence, which, obviously, 
must be settled on a firm basis before the others 
can be reached. 

In the next place, the sequence of events which 
constitute the law of independent life distinctly 
points out many things which ought to be "thus 
and so," but are not. For example, all men ought 
to have enough to eat and drink, and for this all 

78 



men ought to have access to land, but landlords 
have been given the control and ownership of land 
by an edict of social agreement in direct antago- 
nism to this ^'ought to be" of human life. 

And here it becomes necessary to differ from 
Professor Brooks, and apparently from you also, 
as to the importance and value of all natural laws. 
You deny that all such laws make for more and 
better life among men, and say truly that there are 
laws of decay as well as laws of growth. But 
these laws are complimentary, one to the other. 
There is no decay without growth, and no growth 
without decay. Neither is there death without 
life, nor life without death; and it is therefore need- 
less to argue that decay and death make for more 
and better life among men, for both are essential 
to the law — they constitute no exception. 

Nor can scientific men afford "to repudiate 
the opinion that natural laws are ^rulers^ and ^gov- 
ernors' over nature, or look with suspicion on all 
'necessary' and ^universal' laws. Man has never 
found out such." 

But what more suitable metaphors or what 
safer standards can be used? When we say that 
the sun rules the day and the moon governs the 
night, no one supposes that they rule by edicts, 
susceptible to change, but we simply mean that 

79 



there exists an ascertained sequence of particular 
events so definite, so sure, and so constant, that 
we are able to tell the minute of sunrise at any 
given place, or any given day, in any given year, 
in any given century. A suspected law is not a 
natural law — the sequences have not been ascer- 
tained. It is no law at all. It is a surmise or pre- 
sumption only. If we cannot depend on natural 
law (ascertained sequences) for our rule of action, 
ehaos is still here. 

And if ^Ve have not reached a point where de- 
ductive argument can prove anything to be trusted 
in human conduct," where are we? On what other 
ground is it possible to stand? How otherwise 
progress? 

Every successful action of human life depends 
on faithful obedience to some natural law that is 
"ascertained sequences." Men eat and drink to 
live. They depend upon the earth for food and on 
the air for the oxygen they breathe. They walk 
upon their feet; they see with their eyes, hear 
with their ears, and think with their brains, when 
they have any. These and a thousand other laws 
are natural laws of life, the violation of any one of 
which makes for misery and death. Are not the 
professors of Stanford searching the earth for 
truth, that is, for "ascertained sequences," for the 
benefit of human conduct? Has the law of evolu- 

«0 



tion no lessons for effective human action? Or, 
to take a concrete example, the widest and closest 
observation has firmly established the relationship 
between temperance and health, and there is no 
difficulty whatever in applying this universal law 
to influence our lives and happiness. 

Nor is experiment needed to determine what is 
justice, for justice is an eternal and unalterable 
principle of action, the law of which is as well 
established as the law of gravitation. Justice is 
simply '^the equality of all men before the law.'' 
But not equality before all sorts of law; not equal- 
ity before unequal law; not equality before un- 
truthful law; not equality before bench law; not 
equality before military law; not equality before 
United States law— in fine, not equality before any 
human made law whatever. But justice is the 
equality of all men before natural law, which is 
alone just and equal and the only law which, when 
free to all men, as it should be, provides a certain 
guarantee that life, liberty and happiness are with- 
in the reach of all men. 

Justice, therefore, simply gives to all men equal 
title to the benefits of "ascertained sequences," or 
natural law. It is injustice which denies these 
benefits to any, and such denial is continually or- 
dained by human legislation and carried out by 
force. 



81 



Justice entitles no man to the exclusive use of 
any benefits due to natural laws, and neither gov- 
ernments nor constitutions can confer on some ex- 
clusive title to natural benefits which belong 
equally to others. ''I will accept nothing for my- 
self/' says W. Whitman, 'Vhich all may not have 
the counterpart of on equal terms/' This alone is 
absolute fairness between man and man. 

The credential of jusice is not difficult to find; it 
is exposed on the very surface of all just laws, and 
attested by the absence of special privileges. All 
men are equal before natural law, but the injustice 
of social agreement, in the form of American law, 
has conferred special privileges on landlords at the 
expense of other people. 

Moreover, justice does not "depend on govern- 
mental forms, nor is it attained slowly by their 
aid.'' Government in any form or by any means 
is incapable of creating justice or even of securing 
its attainment, for the relation of "all men" to 
natural law is personal and sacred, and is deter- 
mined, not by governmental forces, but by the 
man himself. All that governments can do is to 
disturb the equality of right, as when it confers on 
landlords the exclusive privilege of private owner- 
ship of land, whereby they are enabled to exclude 
other citizens from the very source of life. Justice 
as thus defined is the foundation of individual free- 

«2 



dotn, and it is the only safe guide of human con- 
duct. It applies to "all men," both in the individ- 
ual and collective sense. It is the cardinal princi- 
ple of democratic government, and the only rea- 
sonable hope for peace and good will among indi- 
viduals and nations. 

It is thus proved that the Government of the 
United States is a fortress of injustice, in which 
the acknowledged right of all men to life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness is fettered and con- 
fined. You declare that the only government you 
recognize is that which establishes justice, never 
that which establishes injustice, and I therefore 
confidently call upon you to assist in the alteration 
of American law that justice may be permitted to 
prevail. 

Human legislation cannot even foster justice. It 
can only interfere with it; for whenever govern- 
ments attempt empirically to correct or extermi- 
nate personal misdoings the freedom of justice is 
destroyed and the evil is increased. 

For men cannot be made just to one another, 
honest, sober, clean, polite or virtuous by any form 
of human legislation. These are and ever must be 
personal considerations — to be determined by per- 
sonal associations and personal education. When 
I was a boy drunkenness was the test of English 
hospitality. A gentleman dishonored his host by 

83 



walking home; he honored him by drinking his 
three bottles and falling insensible underneath the 
table. The poor man also measured his happiness 
by the same standard and got home from the fairs 
and junketings after lying in the ditch all night. 
All this time there were laws to punish drunkards, 
from which, as usual, the rich escaped, and by 
which the poor and ignorant were scourged. 
Amongst the rich this test of hospitality has long 
«ince passed away, without any legal interference; 
public opinion has declared such conduct a dis- 
grace to the class, but the poor and ignorant con- 
tinue their excesses in spite of governmental 
forces. 

For natural law is the only real schoolmaster 
which teaches wisdom and shows up the folly of 
disobedience to its righteous teachings. It is the 
master force of progress. Civilization advances 
as fast as the fools learn wisdom or are killed off 
by the law of evolution. Nature is kind to her 
true disciples, but has no mercy for the fools. 
When a man drinks to excess over night he gets a 
warning headache in the morning. If he neglects 
this warning, his liver, brains and family surely 
suffer, and with further persistence in his evil- 
doing comes misery and death. But human stu- 
pidity presumes to improve on natural law. It 
taxes drink, enacts prohibition, and closes the 

84 



saloons. It fines and imprisons the drunkard 
when caught by the police. It fears that the fool 
will get another headache; that he may ruin his 
family, or even kill himself with drink. Thus, 
whilst natural law would utterly destroy the fools, 
human edicts are issued to protect them from their 
folly and to preserve the breed. Swaddling 
clothes and leading strings are only fit for infants, 
but 771671 must be made to realize the consequences 
of evil doing, each on his own account. Under 
the uninterrupted reign of natural law fools will 
be overwhelmed in their own folly and wise men 
will increase and multiply. 

All that justice wants, therefore, is a fair field 
and no favor. It asks no direct help from govern- 
ments and human edicts. It grows by its own in- 
herent force. It is fostered by personal education 
and by personal association with the just. In all 
other respects it simply asks to be left religiously 
alone. 

But justice demands the destruction of all 
special privileges and the recognition by govern- 
ments of the title of all men equally to the benefits 
of natural laws; individuals and nations may then 
rest in calm assurance that the power of good 
must in the end prevail. 

Now, it is the province of schools and universi- 
ties to search out truth and justice, which are but 

85 



different expressions of the same great law, for 
there is no truth in injustice, no injustice in truth. 
It is for the professors of political economy to 
teach all governments that the progress of truth 
and justice is beyond the scope of human legisla- 
tion, and that it is for individuals to choose be- 
tween the happiness of good and the misery of 
evil. As Moses told the Jew^s, "Behold, I have set 
before thee this day, life and good, death and evil." 
Man's whole business upon earth is to search out 
natural laws, whether of truth and falsehood, jus- 
tice and injustice, good and evil, life and death. 
The more we know of these laws, the more accu- 
rately we trace their action, the more faithfully we 
follow their teachings for good and their warnings 
against evil, the longer we shall live and the hap- 
pier we must be, for all natural laws (ascertained 
sequences) make for more and better life among 
men. 

'Note IS. — Social agreement is impotent to pro- 
vide either food or employment for all manknd. 

(S.) 

Human action in any form is important. (J.) 

If humanity is really impotent to provide its own 

food by its own exertion, it is very badly fixed. 

But there are pretty good indications that we may 

struggle on a few more centuries without fear of 

8r> 



starvation. The little State of California could 
easily provide for another hundred millions if 
cultivated like the Channel Islands. If only 60 per 
cent, of the land of California were cultivated on 
the same scale as those islands, there would be 
adequate support for one hundred and twenty 
millions, and she still might export much more 
produce than she does to-day. (S.) 

^oife IJf. — It is not your democracy nor any 
other ocracy that makes your people contented. 
It is because you have very much land and very 
few people. — Carlyle. (J.) 

Free land makes a free and contented people. 
California should be the freest and most contented 
on earth. Yet it is not half as contented as the 
Channel Islanders, who number thirteen hundred 
to the square mile, and have neither tramps nor 
paupers. (S.) 

l^ote 15. — This is not the whole story. Giving 
anything pauperizes. England has not land 
enough to support all her people if all had land 
and none worked on the results of labor. (J.) 

The whole story is not necessary. Some pauper- 
ism is self-induced, but much more is created by 
the mistakes of social agreement and the injustice 
established by governments. It is not true that the 

87 



giving of anything pauperizes. The Jews give 
freely to their poor, but do not pauperize. The 
giving or receiving of anything is, in itself, neither 
dishonorable nor degrading. It is a complete de- 
lusion to suppose that England has not land 
enough to support her population. If the culti- 
vable area of the United Kingdom were cultivated 
as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium 
there would be food for thirty-seven millions of 
people, and England might export food without 
ceasing to manufacture (Krapotkin). If the popu- 
lation of the United Kingdom came to be doubled, 
all that would be required for producing food for 
eighty millions would be to cultivate the soil as it 
is already cultivated on the best farms in England^ 
Lombardy, or Flanders, and to utilize meadow 
lands, which are now almost unproductive, in the 
same way as in the neighborhood of the big cities 
of France (Krapotkin). In 1870 I visited the 
Breton farm at Romford. It cost the owner £40 
an acre, and had been cultivated by the former ten- 
ant and his two sons, with the help of two horses. 
At the time of my visit thirty men and twenty- 
five horses were employed, besides a hundred 
women and children. The annual cost of cultiva- 
tion was fl75 an acre, and the produce sold for 
more than double. The irrigation farm at Alder- 



sTiot cost the English Government twelve cents an 
acre. It now rents for |100 per acre annually. 

It is the incubus of rent which strangles English 
agriculture. The industrial classes of England 
have to pay their landlords one billion dollars 
annually for the privilege of standing on English 
soil; and they have to pay nearly as much again in 
taxes. The Liberals are now proposing to transfer 
one-fifth of the rental of England to the public 
treasury, relieving industry annually to the tune 
of twenty millions of dollars. Believed of this 
overwhelming burden, the industrial classes will 
get higher wages and at the same time be able to 
compete successfully with any industrial com- 
munity on earth. 

SOCIAL AGREEMENT. 

2<ote 16. — Social agreement cannot successfully 
control the conditions of independent human life. 

(S.) 

This does not follow. Property is not a divine 
right; it is a creation of social agreement which is 
the resultant of social forces, psychological forces 
and human history. Social agreement is a fact, 
using that term for its statutes or conventional 
operations among men. No statesman can rise 
much above social agreement, which is the inevi- 



table result of laws and conditions. Social agree- 
ment must approximate the best conditions if civi- 
lization progresses; it declines if intelligence and 
activity decline. It grows better as men grow 
wiser. Men cannot grasp at higher laws they have 
not the wisdom to understand. Social agreement, 
like the methods of farmers, varies with the wis- 
dom of its units. It is pretty bad yet. Most farm- 
ing is equally bad. (J.) 

The conditions of independent human life are as 
fixed and unalterable as the law of gravitation, 
and cannot be amenable to human statutes or the 
conventional operations of men. By defying ascer- 
tained sequences (natural law), individuals may 
turn night into day, and will surely suffer for their 
folly. So also social agreement may defy justice 
and establish starvation, misery and death. It 
has already done so. For social agreement has no 
definite principle of action; it has no respect for 
either truth or justice. There are communities in 
which social agreement makes heroes of the most 
expert thieves and most successful burglars. The 
general who kills most Filipinos will be worship- 
ped by social agreement in America to-day. Social 
agreement supports protection in one country and 
free trade in another; imperialism in one place 
and popular government in another. There is no 
folly or injustice for which this mythical and many 

90 



headed monster is not made the scapegoat. Social 
agreement is the tool of wealth; it is the slave of 
power; it has an unreasoning reverence for vested 
interests, even when those interests are most un- 
just in their nature and most injurious to the ma- 
jority of people. Social agreement is the strong- 
hold of special privileges, all of which retard the 
progress of industrial freedom. It is social agree- 
ment which takes twenty millions annually from 
the industrial classes of San Francisco for the 
privilege of standing on its soil and more than 
half as much again for taxes. It is social agree- 
ment which enables a privileged few to live in idle- 
ness and luxury on the industry of other people. 
Your verdict that it is "pretty bad'^ gives me the 
greatest satisfaction, but I am the more surprised 
that you should prefer social agreement to Divinity 
as an authority for the "right to property," for 
Divinity includes the idea of ascertained sequences, 
or natural law. What possible "right" can be es- 
tablished by "pretty bad" authority? What possi- 
ble title has a "pretty bad authority" to grant 
privileges to some men and deny the same to 
others? Social agreement cannot influence human 
action successfully until it respects justice between 
man and man. This must be the standard to 
which all statutes and conventional operations 
among men must be referred before adoption. I 

91 



confidently claim your assistance and that of your 
professors to destroy '^pretty bad'' as an authority 
for ^^rights'' of any kind, and to establish justice as 
the cardinal principle of social action in the 
United States. (S.) 

'Note 11. — The community must get at land, not 
necessarily all its individuals. (J.) 

All men must get at land, for no one can find a 
footing in the clouds. All men must have access 
to land for food. 

Men can enjoy universal access without being 
farmers, miners, or market gardeners (vide note 6). 

(S.) 

Note 18. — In collective labor, there is ''invari- 
ably" a surplus produced by the co-operators in 
their corporate capacity. (S.) 

Invariably? Some men are devoured by wages. 
Cost of production can be less than product only 
when the greatest wisdom exists. (J.) 

Invariably. There is no exception. Land is a 
prime necessity of all co-operative industry. The 
mere presence of the workers creates land value, 
which is the source of rent. Rent is a first charge 
on co-operative industry, and the landlord takes 
his rent even when the employer, through lack of 
wisdom, is devoured by wages. The landlord is 

92 



the true devourer both of employers and employed. 
He takes his toll on all the wealth that they create, 
come what may. (S.) 

ISfote 19. — The surplus of collective industry is 
conserved in rent; consequently land value in- 
creases with population. (S.) 

This is purely theoretical. The value of a place 
depends in part on the scramble for it. (J.) 

And what is the scramble but the higgling of 
the market, that which determines the value of 
labor and all other things? When the scramblers 
are many, values rise; when they are few, they fall. 
The scramble represents the price buyers are will- 
ing to give for the satisfaction of their desire for 
land, and when the public are purchasers, the 
value of the land for public use. This is fact, not 
theory. (S.) 

PROPERTY IN LAND. 

Note 20. — Property in land is a creation of social 
agreement. The world cannot prevent the men 
who got hold of Greece from becoming Grecians. 
Once Grecians, they did not give the barbarians 
half a chance. Although free appropriation may 
have been bad policy, it binds us just the same. If 
it is bad policy, don't do it again. If a deed was 
given to the first settlers in San Francisco we, who 
have agreed to recognize this act, or sworn fealty 

ft3 



to the American Constitution, must recognize that 
the land is now theirs. Certainly the title of own- 
ers having such deeds is better than that of others 
who have none. This may have been unwisdom, 
but it gives no man and no community moral or 
legal right to correct it, unless a community agrees 
upon a method of correction. The community can 
only deal honestly and legally by paying for what 
it takes. The land is now in the hands of innocent 
purchasers, who have exchanged products of labor 
for it on the guarantee of title by the Constitution. 
The question is one of action to-day, but George's 
proposal to tax ownership out of existence is con- 
fiscation, whether taken all at once or in a thou- 
sand years. All taxation is accomplished by 
force. (J.) 

In the first place, as to the legal compact and the 
American Constitution. In giving deeds to land 
owners, the Constitution reserved the right of 
taxation. Keal estate is taxed in every State, 
often by separate assessment. Nor has any limit 
ever been imposed on such taxation by the Con- 
stitution of the United States. There is no con- 
stitutional obstacle to the taxation of land value 
even to the extent proposed by Henry George, for 
government may have full right under conditions 
to claim the lives and property of all the citizens. 

The question is simply one of justice. 

94 



Now, the arguments here advanced are exactly 
thoseemployed by the slave-owners fifty years ago. 
They admitted that slavery was originally the 
creation of force, and that the w^hite people acted 
like Grecians and did not give the colored races 
half a chance; that the institution was adopted 
by social agreement and the Constitution, which 
, recognized the deeds of transfer and enacted laws 
for its maintenance, of w^hich the fugitive slave 
law was a marked example. The ownership of 
slaves had the same sanction as the ownership of 
land. Less than forty years ago slaves were in 
the hands of innocent purchasers, who had ex- 
changed products of labor for them on the guaran- 
tee of title by the Constitution, and they said that 
although it might have been unwisdom, no man 
and no community had a legal or a moral right to 
correct it, and that the community could only deal 
honestly and legally by paying for what it took. 
Even this right was frequently denied. They com- 
plained that emancipation was confiscation. 

And yet President Lincoln never did a more com- 
plete act of justice than when he issued his procla- 
mation giving emancipation to some millions of 
his fellow citizens, recognizing the fact that justice 
demands the equal application to all men of the 
ascertained sequences associated with human life, 
of which personal freedom is an essential element. 

95 



But if the destruction of land ownership be con- 
fiscation under the law of justice, what special 
claim have landlords for exemption over other peo- 
ple? Professors of political economy seem to 
think that confiscation only fits the rich. They 
never protest against the confiscation of the poor 
man's industry. The sacrifice of a man's labor, 
skill and subsistence, in fact, all that he has to live 
upon, is called the inevitable result of social pro- 
gress, never confiscation, and no one proposes re- 
muneration for the loss sustained. Then why 
should landlords be paid for what they never 
earned? 

Forty years ago twenty thousand sober, indus- 
trious, working tailors in Whitechapel, London, 
were reduced to absolute starvation by the intro- 
duction of the sewing machine. To-day the lino- 
type machines are taking bread out of the mouths 
of thousands of intelligent compositors, who have 
given the best part of their lives to the faithful 
service of the public, and now, being good for 
nothing else, they have been driven down to the 
bare subsistence scale of wages by conditions ut- 
terly beyond their own control. Why should not 
landlords, who have enjoyed so many comforts in 
the past, be made also to fall before the Jugger- 
naut of human progress? The slave-owners fell, 
and why not landlords also? 

96 



But the sacrifice demanded is not all loss. The 
troubles anticipated by the slave-owners have not 
been realized or have had their compensation. 
They are no longer degraded by association with 
slavery, the separation of children from their par- 
ents and the cruel whip. They have been human- 
ized and freed from responsibilities beyond their 
power to discharge, and to-day there is not to be 
found a slave-owner of forty years ago who would 
restore the institution. 

And justice will be equally lenient to landlords^ 
but few of whom will be reduced to common labor^ 
as the use and occupation of their lands will re- 
main secure and they will not be deprived of im- 
provements henceforth to be relieved from unjust 
taxation. 

Like the slave-owners, the landlords will be freed 
from an odious thraldom. They will cease to be 
the drones of social life. They will be saved the 
perjury and deception by which they now shame- 
fully shift the burden of taxation on to the 
shoulders of the poor. In spite of themselves they 
will be made honest men. Deprived of rent, the 
pious thief will no longer be able to steal thirty 
millions annually from the earth, which is the pub- 
lic treasury of wealth, and he will no longer 
have need to bribe legislators or to establish pro- 



97 



fessorships of political economy to promote, sus- 
tain and justify his robberies. 

And as regards the recipients of justice. The 
serfs of industrial bondage have a decided advant- 
age over the slaves of the past. Freedom was for 
them a new experience. They were too ignorant 
to take advantage of it. But, happily, the serfs 
of industry are not all reduced to the condition of 
^'The Hoe" man, and even he would stand upright 
and have an upward look if his bondage were re- 
moved. 

!Now, the application of rent to the public service 
and the relief of every industry from taxation 
would create a new world, both for the producer 
and consumer. The rent of the oil fields would 
pay the war tax, and the rent of mines the current 
expenses of the government, and as rents decline, 
wages, being complementary thereto, would rise. 
Not a laborer in the United States but would be 
able to provide two or three suits of clothes where 
he now possesses one. The impulse given to com- 
merce and manufactures would be irresistible. A 
home market would be created ten times greater 
than that of all China and the East. As Kropot- 
kin says, "let your factories be employed, not in 
supplying the wants of enslaved Filipinos, but to 
satisfy the unsatisfied needs of millions of Ameri- 
cans." Over-production would become impossible. 



Thus the quality of justice, like that of mercy, is 
not strained. Whether it comes like dew from 
heaven upon the earth beneath, or with war, fratri- 
cide and death, it still will come twice blessed. It 
blesseth him that gives and him that takes. The 
conclusion is clear. All rent is created by the 
activities and necessities of the people. It belongs 
to them, and in justice the landlord takes nothing 
but his share of public benefit. Justice has no 
half-way house. It never compromises. It may 
be denied its rights, but it never gives them up. 
It takes all that it can get, but is never satisfied 
until all special privileges are utterly destroyed. 
Governments, therefore, have the same legal and 
moral right to abolish private ownership of land 
as they had to abolish private ownership of slaves. 
Nor is the emancipation of the serfs as hopeless 
now as was the emancipation of the slaves only 
fifty years ago. Men are beginning to grow wiser. 
The industrial classes are beginning to feel their 
bondage. They are commencing to realize that 
land is no man's property any more than air or 
sunshine. They see that the productiveness of 
land is enormously, nay, indefinitely, increased by 
human industry, and that justice and common 
sense alike demand that the occupation and use of 
land shall be as widely and equally distributed as 
possible amongst all mankind. They see that the 

99 



single tax leaves the land itself intact, does not 
diminish production nor imperil permanence of 
occupation. It simply takes the rent for public 
use and destroys the privilege of private owner- 
ship. 

Lastly, the single tax is not forcible taxation. 
Unlike the cyclone, which is violent, destructive 
and partial in its operation, the single tax acts like 
the silent, unfelt, beneficent pressure of the atmos- 
phere. Industrial taxation operates only on spe- 
cial classes and passes by the landlords, who are 
protected by their rent. But the single tax oper- 
ates universally on all. No one can possibly es- 
cape. No one can shirk his duty. No one can shift 
the burden on another's shoulders, and the pres- 
sure will not be felt, being equal in all directions 
and perfectly adjusted to the advantages received. 

Now, in face of the certain fact that the land- 
lords will lose their grip upon the ballot-box, 
which must soon become the impregnable fortress 
of human independence, and that producers and 
consumers number ten to one against their ene- 
mies, the landlords, there is not only hope but cer- 
tainty of eventual victory. So, when the indus- 
trial classes come to know and have courage and 
independence to exercise their power, social agree- 
ment will be forced to change the statute, which is 
all we want. (S.) 

100 



2Vofe 21. — The rise in land values was excep- 
tional. California was treasure trove, and di- 
vided lip by the law of bushwhackers. (J.) 

In every city in the world land values have risen, 
ceteris paribus, in proportion to population and 
the necessities and activities of the people. They 
have increased more in Chicago than in San Fran- 
cisco. San Francisco, in fact, presents an excep- 
tion which supports the rule, for while population 
has increased during the last ten years land values 
have declined, because speculators had created a 
fictitious boom. (S.) 

Note 22. — There are two sides to this picture. 
Public money which does not cost makes irre- 
sponsible waste. (J.) 

There is no public money which does not cost 
brains, strength, and industry, and those who 
make it have the right to dispose of it at will. (S.) 

Isfote 23. — A stable lease would permit develop- 
ment. A long lease has often been regarded as 
substantial ownership. It is therefore prohibited 
in California. (J.) 

This is surely a condemnation of private owner- 
ship in any form. (S.) 

Note 24. — Society cannot separate legally from 
rightfully. (J.) 

101 



The misfortune is that it does so all the time. 
Legally is human law, edicts, or ordinances; right- 
fully is ascertained sequences. Legally is un- 
stable, one thing one day and something else the 
next; rightfully is permanent and unalterable. 
Legally is quite as often wrong as right; right- 
fully is always right. Civilization advances as 
the two approximate, and when they coalesce we 
will have nothing to complain of. (S.) 

'Note 25. — So do the weaker live upon the strong. 
If there were no weak, life would be easier for the 
strong. (J.) 

The weak only exist, they do not live upon the 
strong, and the uniform result is that the few 
strong get stronger and the many weak get 
weaker. (S.) 

Note 26. — Difficult problems, not to be solved on 
economic lines. (J.) 

But cannot be solved on any other lines, because 
the economy of simple existence stands before 
every other consideration. (S.) 

Note 27.— Not true. (J.) 

Hunger is the chief cause of crime, drunkenness 
and ignorance. It is impossible to teach a hungry 
child or get effective labor out of a hungry man. 
Sufficient food is the one absolute condition of an 

102 



independent life, and its provision is a question of 
economics (vide note 12). (S.) 

ISfote 28. — Industrial bondage is one of the 
smallest factors in human misery. (J.) 

It is the fundamental factor, because industria'i 
freedom is the basis of economics and of independ- 
ent life. (S.) 

Note 29. — The lav^ of wages tending to the bare 
subsistence point, called "natural'' by Stuart MilL 

(S.) 
It is natural, that is, the wage system so works. 

(J.) 
It is not natural, because the antecedents are 
neither constant nor necessary, nor are the results 
uniform. (S.) 

Note SO. — All natural laws make for more and 
better life among men. (S.) 

Certainly I deny this. There are laws of decay 
as well as of growth. (J.) 

Vide note 12. (S.) 

Note 31. — Who takes the wealth produced indi- 
vidually and collectively by the laboring classes? 
Are they not governments, landlords, millionaires, 
trusts and corporations? (S.) 

Also idlers, beggars, paupers and unskilled 
laborers. (J.) 

103 



Yes, but the one obtain their wealth by means 
of special privilege and force, and the others can- 
not help themselves while social agreement denies 
them equal opportunity to earn their share by 
labor. (S.) 

SOCIAL PROGRESS. 

'Note 32. — Yet in no land and at no time of the 
world was the condition less unfavorble. (J.) 

On a superficial view this seems to be entirely 
true. Everywhere we recognize the marvelous 
growth of wealth and luxury, the numerous inven- 
tions of labor-saving machinery, the harnessing of 
natural forces to the service of mankind, the stu- 
pendous advance of Art and Science, the rapid 
construction of cities provided with all the con- 
veniences and luxuries of modern life, the im- 
provement of sanitation and the prolongation of 
human life; and last, but by no means least, the 
extension of education, especially in the higher 
branches. 

But none of these are evidence that justice is in- 
creasing between man and man. They therefore 
afford no proof that the real condition of society 
is better now than it ever was before. Nor is the 
<!onclusion supported by any past experience, for 
whenever the power of a class has grown up under 
the fostering wing of special privilege, whenever 
wealth has accumulated in the hands of drones 

104 



and non-producersj whenever land and its products 
have become the property of a comparatively few 
monopolists, poverty and dependence have invari- 
ably grown faster than the wealth and luxury. 
And not all the pomp of power, not all the forces 
of civilization have been able to stifle the fire of in- 
justice and oppression raging underneath the sur- 
face, and no nation has been able to withstand the 
explosion which eventually took place. In spite 
then of all appearances, it may yet be true that 
the condition of society, even in this favored land, 
was never more unfavorable than it is to-day. 

Neither wealth nor education can be regarded 
as tests of social progress. Andrew Carnegie says 
that it is certain that the men who do the work do 
not get rich. Wealth does not justly come to its 
producers. The rich become richer and the poor 
poorer. And education, without industrial free- 
dom for its basis, only creates desires and ambi- 
tions more rapidly than the means for satisfaction. 
In that case men become discontented and are 
tempted to live by their superior wit on the in- 
dustry of others rather than their own, which 
tends to robbery and crime. The decrease of in- 
justice between man and man is the only measure 
of sound progress, and this is attested by the de- 
crease of poverty and its consequences, which may 
be easily observed. 

105 



^To make men good and kind and noble, and to 
give them independence, it is necessary, first and 
foremost, to satisfy their material wants. When 
one's whole time and energy are needed to fight 
for the necessaries of life, there is no opportunity 
for the cultivation of those higher qualities which 
distinguish men from brutes. Poverty is not a 
genial soil for culture. Only the weeds of igno- 
rance can thrive on it. There are no moral con- 
siderations in the presence of starvation; no in- 
tellectual needs while material wants remain un- 
satisfied.'' ('The Story of My Dictatorship.") 

(Moreover, the worst forms of poverty do not 
appear upon the surface for ''to be poor and seem 
poor" is repugnant to all men, especially to men of 
education, who therefore cover up their needs. 
Poverty may be best discovered by its inseparable 
associates, first, involuntary and unnatural indo- 
lence, the consequence of insufficient or unwhole- 
some food, and bad environment, a form of indo- 
lence which soon becomes habitual and heredi- 
tary; then loss of self-respect and independence, 
then crime and immorality in every form. 

To the needs of poverty and to the artificially* 
created needs of fashion equally imperative, 
women sacrifice their virtue, merchants their 
credit, educated men their honor, and all of them 
seek the use of artificial stimuli to raise their 

106 



drooping spirits or to excite their exhausted bodies 
for more exertion. But once give men justice, 
once give them equal opportunity to take the bene- 
fits of natural law, which are more than sufficient 
for the satisfaction of their material needs, once 
banish poverty, and the fear of poverty, and 
human nature may be safely trusted for the rest. 
But let us examine the question from a practical 
point of view, taking the City of San Francisco as 
a good example. Here, if any where, the progress 
of social organization may be definitely seen. For 
here we have the capital of a State, the richest in 
natural resources ui)on earth, whose mountains 
are loaded with gold and precious minerals, and 
whose valleys are so fertile that a hundred inhabi- 
tants could be sustained in comfort, where there is 
only one to-day. A city built upon the foreshore of 
one of the finest harbors in the world — the Golden 
Gate to the Pacific Ocean — the open doorway to 
the commerce of the Orient. To this glorious spot 
came a community selected by the law of evolu- 
tion. Invalids died by thousands on the way, and 
dullards stayed at home. All men came with an 
equal chance. Lawyers, doctors, bankers, and di- 
vines worked side by side with miners, teamsters 
and common laborers; there was work and oppor- 
tunity for all, and this active and intelligent com- 
munity has been continually reinforced by men of 

107 



energy and intelligence from every region upon 
earth. 

There was much open land, and the incomers 
were few and contented. But we have seen that 
the city began with an unjust appropriation by a 
few individuals of all the land in sight, and when, 
after a quarter of a century, all the useful land in 
the State was similarly taken up, a change began, 
and, if the change has worked righteously and 
well, if the condition of society is really less un- 
favorable, we may reasonably expect, due allow- 
ance being made for the increase of population, 
that there is now less poverty, less crime, less im- 
morality, less need of policemen, jails and alms 
houses, and proof beyond doubt that the condi- 
tion of the mass of citizens is becoming less and 
less unfavorable every year. 

Now, in 1874 the millionaires were few in num- 
ber, but have since then steadily increased. No 
one has lived in the City during the last quarter of 
a century can doubt that the few rich have become 
richer, and as they have long since ceased to be 
producers, their wealth has accumulated at the 
expense of other people. They have taken toll of 
the collective industry of their fellow citizens in 
the shape of rent, and to-day the industrial classes 
of San Francisco pay the landlords twenty mil- 



108 



lions annually before they get a bite of food for 
themselves and families. 

Forty per cent, of the municipal and State taxa- 
tion is also paid directly by the industrial classes, 
besides poll tax and their contribution to real es- 
tate taxation making up the whole. Besides this 
they pay the larger portion of Federal taxation, 
all of which is paid by the consumers. Under 
these conditions poverty cannot possibly diminish. 
The landlords take the cream, and leave to the rest 
skim milk. 

And now examine the return of crime. The fol- 
lowing figures are taken from the Municipal Ke- 
ports: 

1874. 1898. ^^l'^ 

Population 200,770 360,000 79 

Number of Police 121 559 362 

Arrests by Police 13,000 29,168 112 

" of Drunkards 5,092 12,738 150 

" for Burglary 124 274 121 

'' for Grand Larceny. . 149 290 94 

Divorce Suits 428 911 112 

Suicides 56 146 160 

Inmates of Alms House.... 340 912 168 

Inmates of State Prison. . . 931 2,207 127 

Every one of these items affords indisputable 
evidence of increasing poverty, and every one in- 
dicates that the condition of society is steadily 
growing worse notwithstanding the increase of 



109 



wealth and knowledge, and the advance of educa- 
tion. 

This conclusion is also supported by strong in- 
dividual testimony. The Rev. Father McDonnel 
writes: "I am by no means a pessimist, but for 
fifteen years I have lived among the poor, and talk- 
ed and felt with them. I cannot find one person 
to deny that the industrial conditions were not 
more favorable in 1874 than in 1899. It is now 
much more difi&cult to obtain employment, wages 
have steadily declined, and are going down every 
year. The reduction of prices of necessaries and 
luxuries is not in the same proportion. The work- 
ing classes are certainly more dissatisfied with 
their condition now than ever before in the history 
of the world. This dissatisfaction is growing year- 
ly. Cases of involuntary destitution are very fre- 
quent. I have known cases of voluntary death by 
starvation, and I should say that want of employ- 
ment is often a cause of suicide." 

Mr. Fitzgerald, for many years connected with 
the laboring class, and now State Labor Commis- 
sioner, says: ^The strongest evidence of the in- 
creasing economic pressure is the invasion of 
women into nearly every employment, for women 
only go to the workshops as a last resource. In 
my experience, I have found employment for 
18,000 workers, and I can say with truth that there 

110 



is no position so hard and laborious, no hours so 
long, and no wages so poor and insufficient, which 
I could not fill in forty-eight hours' notice, pro- 
vided food and shelter were included. Only a few 
years ago the coalworkers of Pennsylvania offered 
to contract their services for life, if the mine own- 
ers would engage to provide them with the neces- 
saries of life. According to my experience eco- 
nomic pressure is increasing every day.'' 

To this important testimony let me add my own: 
In 1874 I was staying in the country, and was in- 
troduced to "the lady" who condescended to do my 
laundry at 25c. a piece. In the same year in the 
city, we all paid invalids 25c. for cleaning boots, 
a service now rendered by able-bodied men for 5c., 
and there are hundreds of competitors at that. 
The invalids are now either begging in the streets 
or have been driven to the Alms House. Unlike 
military pressure, economic pressure takes away 
the weak. In 1874 the wages of farm hands were 
$30 a month with board and lodging in the winter, 
and $60 in the summer. Now they are $5 a month 
in the winter, and from |15 to $20 in the summer, 
and there still remains an army of tramps, and in- 
volutary disemployed. In 1874 country people 
never locked their doors; to-day none but the 
foolish leave them open. In 1874 the number of 
defaulting bankers and municipal officials were 

111 



not comparable with the same to-day. The num- 
ber of "misfits" seems to be steadily increasing in 
every profession. In 1874 I had no difficulty in 
collecting fees from even the poorer classes; now 
the rush to hospitals and polyclinics for gratuitous 
advice is overwhelming. 

But, after all, what is the truest test of the eco- 
nomic condition of the body politic? Surely, that 
it secures the existence and reasonable comfort of 
all its members; and the question is, do intelli- 
gent, able and industrious people ever succumb to 
involuntary destitution? Most certainly they do. 
In San Francisco such deaths are increasing in 
number every year out of all proportion to the in- 
crease of population. 

Let me give an illustrationn : In January last 
Mr. and Mrs. T. arrived in San Francisco with two 
young children. He was sober, steady, indus- 
trious, and had been prosperous. He failed to ob- 
tain employment, but his wife secured work as a 
seamstress. Her earnings, however, were insuf- 
ficient for the family support, and she denied her- 
self necessary food. After 16 hours' work, with- 
out food, she went to her husband, and exclaimed: 
"Oh! the pain of it. I am fainting; dying for 
want of food"; and sinking on the floor she was 
picked up dead. There is here no evidence of 
hereditary taint, no evidence of ignorance — a case 

U2 



which neither charity nor poor laws can provide 
for or prevent. A case due to economic conditions 
unfavorable to the maintenance of life, conditions 
absolutely destructive of personal independence; 
conditions created by society itself, and which be- 
come worse and worse the longer they exist and 
the more perfectly they are carried out. 

But in San Francisco to-day there is direct evi- 
dence of a still more pitiable poverty — more un- 
bearable than any which has before presented 
itself in any land or in any time of human history, 
for men and women are driven almost daily to a 
voluntary self-inflicted death by inability to ob- 
tain employment. They prefer suicide to depend- 
ence on others — sure evidence that they are 
neither ignorant nor idle. Let me give some illus- 
trations which have occurred during the last few 
months: 

R. R., Aet 42, had a wife and two children. He 
was a hard working, industrious and sober man. 
He took whatever work offered and was able to 
support his wife and family. Work becoming 
scarce, destitution stared him in the face, and he 
hanged himself. 

E, H. W., Aet 60, a foundryman, unable to ob- 
tain work, hanged himself. 

Miss G., Aet 50, a nurse of experience and good 
character, not obtaining work, and being re- 
us 



quested to vacate her lodgings, hanged herself. 

F. I., Aet 45, a laborer, unable to find employ- 
ment, jumped into the bay. When rescued he de- 
clined to state whether he would make another 
attempt to end his life. 

G. W. K. came to San Francisco at the beginning 
of the year in search of v/ork. He brought several 
credentials as a steady man, attentive to his duties 
and entirely satisfactory to his employers. He 
wrote an excellent hand and was fairly educated. 
He kept a diary. On February 11th he went to 
work cutting timber. After a week he was seized 
with chills and fever and had to quit. He rode on 
the train a little way and then walked. He slept 
in a shanty and walked to Albion next day, "but it 
was a hard pull over the mountains." Next day 
tried to walk to Point Arenas, but had to stop five 
miles from it; too tired to go any further. Slept 
in a barn. February 24, arrived at Point Arenas at 
11 :30. Got dinner, most awful hungry. February 
27, arrived in San Francisco at 3 a. m. ; remained 
on board boat till 7 a. m. 

Went to S. V. W. W. for work. No go. 

March 1. Found nothing yet. 

March 2. Nothing without money to pay for it. 

March 3. No chance of getting anything to do. 

What will I do? No money, no friends, no work. 
Sick with heart trouble. God help me. 

114 



March 7. Cannot find anything to do yet. 

March 8. Am living on doughnuts; 5 cents a 
day. I don't know where to go or what to do. 

March 9. My last quarter gone for room rent. 

March 10. God help me; have only 5 cents left. 
Can get nothing to do. What next — starvation 
or 

March 11. Went to see about two places this 
morning the first thing, but had a chill at the time, 
so could not get it. Sick all day; this morning 
chill, and burning fever in the afternoon. Nothing 
to eat to-day, since yesterday morning. I'll have 
to starve or die now. 

And he carefully stuffed up the keyhole and 
turned on the gas. 

How one must admire the courage of the man. 
Hungry, chilled and feverish from want of food, 
one meal in many days, he nevertheless presents 
himself for work, hoping to the last. 

Now, I confidently defy the production of any 
such cases among the four and a half millions of 
inhabitants of London. In all my experience in 
the early forties, when in my native town, twenty 
per cent, of the people lived on public charity, 
where I have seen hundreds die from starvation, 
the result of economic pressure, I never saw a 
suicide death to escape that pressure. In the 
slums of Whitechapel, Bethnal Green and Hol- 

115 



born, where I was for some years a guardian of the 
poor, T never saw suicide as the result of destitu- 
tion, and yet within the last few months in San 
Francisco, where the citizens spent a quarter of a 
million for ten days' opera, such suicides are of 
constant occurrence. They form a large propor- 
tion of the enormous increase of suicides of the 
last few years. It is not the death chosen by 
thieves and paupers and the dependent classes, but 
the death of intelligent, self-respecting men driven 
to desperation by the inexorable conditions of so- 
ciety, in which justice has no place. My conclu- 
sion is that in spite of all appearances the eco- 
nomic condition of the mass of the people was 
never less unfavorable than it is to-day. 

^ote 33. — Suflacient education, wisdom and 
thought frees any man. (J.) 

Not without sufficient food. (S.) 

Note 34' — This is true. But he added no new 
facts, and no new deductions. He advanced our 
knowledge of economics in no appreciable degree. 

(J.) 

Henry George never claimed originality. But 
he has revolutionized the science of political econ- 
omy. He has fully and successfully exposed the 
fallacies, confusions, and want of scientific accu- 
racy to be found in all accepted treatises and text- 
lie 



books, particularly with regard to wealth, value, 
etc. For the first time a distinction has been accu- 
rately made between human and natural law, the 
one being the mutable will of man, the other the 
immutable will of God, He has shown that true 
science deals only with natural laws, and that with 
human laws, except as furnishing illustrations and 
subjects for investigation, the science of political 
economy has nothing whatever to do ; that it is the 
science of the maintenance and nutriment of the 
body politic, that is, of man's relation to the 
earth. 

That this relation is independent of moral, 
ethical and political considerations, and that the 
due adjustment of their relation lies at the founda- 
tion of all scientific economics and social progress. 
He shows that the facts and conditions of this re- 
lationship constitute a series of definite sequences 
which we describe as natural law, and this natural 
law is the only true basis of economics ever pro- 
mulgated. 

His "divine authority" is simply metaphor for 
"natural law" or ascertained sequences, and his 
moral law simply justice between man and man. 
Thus, political economy has been taken from "the 
dreamy and indefinite" and established for the 
first time on a scientific basis. This service is 



117 



alone sufficient to place Henry George amongst the 
most distinguished scientists of modern times. 

(S.) 

'Note 35. — And so has Christian science, homeo- 
pathy, vegetarianism, transubstantiation. All 
that brings healing, happiness or the millenium 
in some way easier than your way or mine. (J.) 

Proof that results must always be corrected by 
deductive reasoning from the sequences of natural 
law. (S.) 

Note 36. — I do not doubt the wisdom of taxing 
unearned increment rather than industry; but I 
do not think that George's method of argument 
has added anything permanent. He was a 
preacher, and his converts, when they are numer- 
ous enough to try his experiments, will demon- 
strate its good and evil results. (J.) 

I submit respectfully that George's argument of 
divine authority, which in fact is natural law, is at 
Wast as good and more reliable than the argument 
from social agreement, which is human law. Any- 
way, I am delighted that you acknowledge the wis- 
dom of taxing unearned increment rather than in- 
dustry. I have also little doubt that with further 
thought you will realize the crass folly of taxing 
any form of industry, as if there could be too much 

118 



wealth created. Even now I may say truly that 
thou art almost persuaded to be a single taxer. 

l^ote 37. — I do not refer to the tax on land value 
in these words, but to the argument drawn from 
divine intention in their interest. (J.) 

Is not this a quibble about words? Divine au- 
thority and the purposes of nature are simply in- 
definite metaphors, intended to express natural 
law, just as natural law is metaphor representing 
definite sequences of particular events. (S.) 

Note 5S.— Instead of ^^general law," put facts 
and conditions in the community or race in ques- 
tion. (J.) 

In no community or race would facts or condi- 
tions provide reliable wisdom or a sure guide for 
action. 

Note 39. — No "law" makes for anything else 
than cosmic order. (J.) 

Ascertained sequences undoubtedly make for 
cosmic order. The "law" of human life is an ex- 
ample or the law of gravitation. But human 
"law" continually makes for cosmic disorder. The 
bare subsistence "law" of wages is a good example, 
and makes for starvation, misery and death. (S.) 

jSfote JiO.—yVhj not? What are taxes for? To 
improve land? (J.) 

119 



Taxes are imposed to satisfy social wants. If 
there is no society, there are no social wants and 
no taxation. Until a man becomes a citizen his 
land has no value. There is no market, no hig- 
gling. His industrial products are all his own 
And on the principle of justice are free from taxa- 
tion for the benefit of other people. 

^\ote III. — It expands, but not necessarily in pro- 
portion. (J.) 

"Cateris paribus" and practically in exact pro- 
portion. (S.) 

l^ote Jf2, — The single tax would not be adequate 
in mountain districts to make them inhabitable. 

(J.) 

They would remain deserted until a mine was 
found. (S.) 

l^ote JfS. — Who made that law? It is desirable, 
but not a "law." (J.) 

It is the "law" of justice which secures to every 
laborer the absolute possession and disposal of the 
product of his own exertion. (S.) 

l^ote l^ly. — It is not robbery if agreed to by the 
2)arties concerned. It may or may not be wise, 
that is a question of fact. But one is no more 
divine and no more robbery than the other. (J.) 

120 



But the consent must be intelligently and volun- 
tarily given, with adequate compensation. To 
take from people who are asleep or ignorant of 
their just rights only aggravates the robbery. 
Stanford improvements are unjustly taxed, in 
spite of the protest of the Trustees, and the tax is 
paid under duress of human edict, which does not 
make it just. The tax on land value you acknowl- 
edge to be wise, and this is so because it is estab- 
lished on the principle of justice between man and 
man. But the tax on beer taxes one man for the 
privilege of drinking beer, whilst by so much other 
citizens are relieved of taxation. This distinctly 
is not equal treatment, and therefore is not justice. 
In straight English, it is nothing less than rob- 
bery. If justice is divine, the tax on land value is 
also divine, but avowedly the tax on beer is not. 

(S.) 

'Note JfD. — Because they suffer all collective 
losses. (J.) 

No. They charge insurance against loss and put 
it in the contract. (S.) 

'Note 46. — Capitalists are the bucaneers of in- 
dustry. (S.) 

And also its makers. Laborers do not make the 
conditions under which they work. (J.) 



121 



Capital promotes but does not make industry, 
but industry alone makes capital. Employers and 
employed both work under the conditions given 
them. (S.) 

'Note Jp. — This is true only in part. Unless 
wisely controlled, collective labor cannot produce 
wealth. (J.) 

Very little wealth can be produced without 
it. (S.) 

Note 48. — No, it is not robbery until we can 
legally forbid it by devising something better. (J.) 

If taken unjustly, it is robbery if we had twenty 
other plans. The collective co-partnership is hope- 
lessly handicapped by the privileges of landlords 
and capitalists, who take all the traffic will bear. 

(S.) 

Note 49. — When men are wise enough to co- 
operate intelligently, they can free themselves 
from the cost of control. (J.) 

They will. (S.) 

Note 50. — They will it as they fit themselves for 
it. (J.) 
And the opportunity will make them fit. (S.) 

Note 51. — Industrial freedom must be individual 
and personal. (J.) 

122 



It must also be collective and general. That 
which is true of "all men'' as individuals, must 
also be true of "all men'' collectively. All free- 
dom is individual and personal, whether intellec- 
tual, industrial or political. This is all I contend 
for. (S.) 

'Note 52. — Universities are only places for inves- 
tigation. They utter no protests as universities. 
But every fact is investigated, one as impartially 
as the other. For "a priori" theories investigators 
care nothing. Economists have studied carefully 
all methods of taxation possible and impossible, 
with no more prejudice than you have, each with 
such power as was given him to search out truth. 
That they regard the "Single Tax" as at best a 
choice of evils, is because no facts have taught 
them the reverse. All this is matter of opinion. 
Stanford stands for the search of truth. It has en- 
gaged the ablest economists it could find and pay 
for. Of these. Dr. Warner was pre-eminent in all 
matters he touched. Ross and Durand are not 
bigots, nor does any influence check their freedom 
of thought and speech. (J.) 

Admitting that universities are only places for 
investigation, and that they utter no protests as 
universities, all that can be reasonably expected 
is, that their investigations shall be impartial, and 

123 



the results declared and advocated consistently 
with truth and justice. But scientific investigators 
do not ignore hypothesis, for without its help 
scientific progress would be extremely slow, and 
with its help some of the grandest results have 
been obtained. If the law of independent and col- 
lective human life w^ere nothing but hypothesis, 
which is not true, it might still be worth serious 
consideration, and might lead to magnificent prac- 
tical results, particularly as the present condition 
of society is by no means satisfactory. 

But to declare that (economic) facts are investi- 
gated with impartiality, and that economists have 
carefully studied all methods of taxation, possible 
and impossible, without prejudice, each with such 
power as was given him to search out truth, seems 
to me impossible. For are not many of the Uni- 
versities of America founded by Landlords, Mo- 
nopolists, and Millionaires, who make the profes- 
sors possible, and pay their salaries? Are not all 
American professors supported by the spoils and 
robberies of the landlord system and by unjust 
taxation? How shall professors so placed be ex- 
pected to kill the goose which lays the golden 
eggs? Fancy a professor, created and supported 
by a Kockefeller, turning round and telling his 
patron that he was going to teach the students 
economic justice under the operation of the Sin- 

124 



gle Tax, and that Mr. Kockefeller has no 
more title to the oil he steals from the public trea- 
sury of wealth than the most miserable infant 
born in the slums of New York. How could he say 
that he would tell his students how to destroy land 
ownership, how to put an end to unjust monoplies, 
how to distribute natural benefits more equally 
among the people, and prevent all future public 

robberies? 

Professors appointed under such conditions ac- 
cept the collar of the millionaire. Their province 
is to bolster up the actions of their patron and to 
invent specious arguments against the justice of 
the public claim. If the benefits of land occupa- 
tion belong in justice to the people as a whole, it 
is the people who will have to take them, for there 
is no hope in university professors who are subor- 
dinate to millionaires. 

But I have declared that Stanford is the most 
liberal University in all the world. It is the 
youngest, and is not trammelled by traditions. It 
is free from prejudice, and its teachers are inde- 
pendent and progressive. Moreover, it stands for 
the search for truth and justice also, which it is 
sure to find. It makes for more and better life 
among men by exposing and denouncing error and 
injustice wherever they are found. If not yet an 
advocate of industrial freedom and the Single Tax, 
it must ere long become so, because all its profes- 

125 



sors are young and unprejudiced men of pre-emi- 
nent ability, honesty, and candor, untrammelled 
by authority, and unchecked in speech, and, above 
all, because they are nobly supported by a wise 
and open-minded chief, who is not only prepared 
but anxious to follow the teachings of both truth 
and justice to the very end, even when those teach- 
ings overturn his own convictions,and reverse him- 
self. Once let the professors of Stanford remove 
the bandage which now prevents them from see- 
ing the scales of social justice; once let them see 
that the balance is uneven, that one scale is 
weighted down by the privilege of landlordism 
and the incubus of concentrated wealth, whilst the 
other is raised by poverty, ignorance and bare sub- 
sistence wages almost out of sight of earth and all 
its benefits, and I believe that Stanford will be the 
first University to exert its power to restore 
equality, and make the balance even. Then, and 
then alone, will justice be equivalent with truth, 
and truth with justice also. 

'Note 53. — This kind of misuse of terms hurts the 
real force of your argument. That the least of- 
fensive form of taxation is through land rental I 
am inclined to think true. (J.) 

This is an excellent conclusion. (S.) 
Note 5Jf. — It is best to omit metaphor in scien- 

126 



tific argument, just as in the multiplication table, 
laws being many, as in medicine. (J.) 

No one is able to apply metaphor to the multi- 
plication table, nor to exclude its use in science. 
So long as the constant facts and definite se- 
quences are there, it really matters very little 
whether what we call them, but it must of neces- 
sity be metaphor. It seems to me that "natural 
law" as opposed to "human law" is best. It is 
obviously dangerous to speak of laws in medicine, 
for only a few have been definitely ascertained, 
but there can be no doubt whatever that man is 
a land animal, that is, that his life is maintained 
by definite conditions supplied by land. (Vide 
Note 12.) 

ISfote 55. — It is wrong to break agreements or 
contracts if chefly the innocent shall suffer, they 
who trusted to our contracts. (J.) 

It is a thousand times worse to let millions of 
our brethren suffer from injustice and its inevi- 
table consequences — starvation, misery and death 
— than to inflict mild injury on a comparatively 
few, who have long enjoyed untold advantages 
from contracts which neither party had any just 
right to make. (S.) 

Note 56. — We do not know enough to define such 
a basis to be used in deductive argument as well 

127 



rest on pure water, freedom, sleep and absolute 
prohibition. (J.) 

This is a matter of opinion, but the real question 
is, Do the ascertained sequences involved in the 
maintenance of independent and collective human 
life define the origin of individual and collective 
wealth, and determine the rights of the respective 
owners in its distribution? 

2Vo/e 57. — It takes a thousand things to make a 
Utopia. Industrial elements are only part. 
Utopia, in Mexico, is where no one has to work, 
and go to a fair every week. In an ideal condition 
there would be no majority vote or collective ac- 
tion except as men strove to help each other. (J.) 

And yet you told your students that unless our 
souls dwell in Utopia, life is not worth the keep- 
ing. But in Nature's Utopia there will always be 
a struggle between good and evil. It is the con- 
test between the forces which would destroy and 
those which would uphold which keeps the plan- 
ets in their orbits, and hangs the constellations in 
the firmament. Without temptation, virtue would 
expire (Ingalls). The choice between good and 
evil must be therefore open to all men in the best 
Utopia. Nevertheless it is well that our windows 
should look toward Heaven rather than the gutter, 
even though we should fail to escape completely 

128 



from the paternalism of a non-representative, 
though elected tyranny, or fail to reach the acme 
of a just republic. In fact, we must be satisfied if 
true majorities can be made to rule. (S.) 

Islote 58. — But democracy can handle few things 
wisely; it promotes public interest and intelli- 
gence at the cost of wisdom and persistence. I 
am converted to proportional representation and 
an elected oligarchy as a choice of evils. (J.) 

Tyrants and plutocrats handle few things better 
than democracy, and neither wisdom nor persist- 
ence can compensate for any sacrifice of public in- 
terest and intelligence. No representation is woir- 
thy of the name unless it be proportional, and no 
oligarchy can be effective unless personal respon- 
sibility is entirely replaced by corporate responsi- 
bility truly representing the power of the people. 

To sum up the results of this correspondence, I 
agree with you that practically we are not far 
apart. We agree that true representation depends 
on proportional voting and a pure and effective 
ballot. That government must be wholly by an 
elected, untrammelled oligarchy. That the taxa- 
tion of land values is wiser than the taxation of in- 
dustrial exertion, and although you do not yet see 
your w^ay to the complete relief of individual in- 
dustry from all taxation, I am satisfied that you 
must eventually come to that conclusion. When 

129 



iDclividual industry shall once be freed, nothing 
will be left for taxation except land made valu- 
able by the population. 

I confidently anticipate that you will lend the 
influence of your great name, and that of the in- 
stitution over which you so effectively preside, in 
favor of these great reforms, which lie at the foun- 
dation of all social progress. (S.) 



PRICE 50 CENTS 



THE TRUE BASIS 

OF 

ECONOMICS 



THE LAW OF INDEPENDENT AND 
COLLECTIVE HUMAN LIFE 



BEING A CORRESPONDENCE 

BETWEEN 

DAVID STARR JORDAN 

President of the Leland Stanford Jr. University 



DR. J. H. STALLARD 

Of Menio Park, California 
ON THE MERITS OF 

THE DOCTRINE OF HENRY GEORGE 



NEW YOEK 
DOUBLED AY & McCLURE CO. 



Library of Congress 
Branch Bindery, 1903 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 476 946 4 




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